Harriet Walter

Dame Harriet Mary Walter  (born 24 September 1950) is a British actress. She has performed on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and received an Olivier Award, a Tony Award, five Emmy Awards and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2011, Walter was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to drama.

Walter began her career acting with the Royal Shakespeare Company in productions of Twelfth Night (1987–88) and Three Sisters (1988), for which she received the Olivier Award for Best Actress. She received Olivier nominations for Life x 3 (2001), and Mary Stuart (2006). Her other notable work for the RSC includes leading roles in Macbeth (1999) and Antony and Cleopatra (2006).

She made her Broadway debut in the 1983 revival of the William Shakespeare play All's Well That Ends Well (1983). She returned to Broadway in Mary Stuart for which she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She reprised her roles of Brutus in Julius Caesar (2012) and the title role in Henry IV (2014), as well as playing Prospero in The Tempest, as part of an all-female Shakespeare trilogy in 2016.

Walter has acted in the films Sense and Sensibility (1995), The Governess (1998), Atonement (2007), The Young Victoria (2009), A Royal Affair (2012), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), Denial (2016), The Sense of an Ending (2017), Rocketman (2019) and The Last Duel (2021). On television she starred as Harriet Vane in the 1987 BBC Wimsey dramatisations and as Natalie Chandler in the ITV drama series Law & Order: UK from 2009 to 2014. She has also acted in Downton Abbey (2013–15), London Spy (2015), The Crown (2016), Patrick Melrose (2018), Killing Eve (2020), and Silo (2023). She has earned Primetime Emmy Award nominations for her roles in Succession (2018–2023) and Ted Lasso (2021–2023).

Early life 
Walter was born in London, England. She is the niece of British actor Sir Christopher Lee, being the daughter of his elder sister Xandra Lee. On her father's side, Walter is a great-great-great-great-granddaughter of John Walter, founder of The Times. She was educated at Cranborne Chase School. After turning down a university education, she was rejected by five drama schools before being admitted to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Following her training, she gained early experience with the Joint Stock Theatre Company, Paines Plough touring, and the Duke's Playhouse, Lancaster.

Career 
Walter worked with Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) productions Nicholas Nickleby (1980), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1981), All's Well That Ends Well (1981), The Castle (1985), A Question of Geography, Twelfth Night (1988), Three Sisters (1988), The Duchess of Malfi (1989), Macbeth (1999), Much Ado about Nothing (2002) and Death of a Salesman (2015).

In 1987, Walter was made an associate artist of the RSC. Additional theatre work includes Three Birds Alighting on a Field (1991), Arcadia (1993), Hedda Gabler (1996), Ivanov (1997) and Mary Stuart (2005).

Walter made her Broadway debut in 1983, when the RSC production of All's Well That Ends Well transferred there. In 1993, she starred as Biddy in the off-Broadway production of Three Birds Alighting on a Field, for which she received a Drama Desk Award nomination. She returned to the Broadway stage in 2009, when she reprised her role in Mary Stuart. In 2014, Walter starred as Brutus in an all-female off-Broadway production of Julius Caesar and received her second Drama Desk nomination.

Walter's films include Sense and Sensibility (1995), Bedrooms and Hallways (1998), The Governess (1998), Onegin (1999), Villa des Roses (2002) and Bright Young Things (2003). In 1987, she portrayed Harriet Vane in three installments of the BBC's A Dorothy L. Sayers Mystery, and played Detective Inspector Natalie Chandler from 2009 to 2012 in the ITV drama series Law & Order: UK. Other television roles include Waking the Dead (2001), Little Dorrit (2008), A Short Stay in Switzerland (2009) and Lady Shackleton in four episodes of the series Downton Abbey (2013–15).

In 2016, Walter played Clementine Churchill on the Netflix series The Crown, two episodes in 2017 in Call the Midwife and in a recurring role on the HBO series Succession (2018⁠–23). In 2020, Walter joined the series Killing Eve.

Walter played Brutus in Julius Caesar in 2012, and the title role in Henry IV in 2014, in all-female productions at the Donmar Warehouse. Both productions transferred to Brooklyn's St. Ann's Warehouse in New York. She was set to reprise both roles, as well as playing Prospero in an all-female production of The Tempest, as part of director Phyllida Lloyd's Shakespeare trilogy at the Donmar's temporary, in-the-round, 420-seat theatre next to King's Cross station in 2016.

Personal life 
Walter's was in a relationship with actor Peter Blythe from 1996 until his death in 2004. She married actor Guy Paul in 2011.

At the age of 20, Walter became a feminist and went "into political theatre; to try and put as much feminism into the interpretation of parts I was playing". She was conflicted on her damehood and nearly turned it down, but eventually decided to accept because "there are many fewer women [than men] who can sustain a career to the point where they can be named a dame, and that's not through lack of talent. It was a slightly political gesture". She supported the UK remaining in the European Union in the run-up to the 2016 EU referendum.

Walter, who is proficient in the Russian language, performed a reading at the 2022 Poets for Ukraine event alongside the likes of Juliet Stevenson and Meera Syal. In light of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, Walter was one of over two thousand to sign an Artists for Palestine letter calling for a ceasefire and accusing western governments of "not only tolerating war crimes but aiding and abetting them." She condemned the decision to rescind Caryl Churchill's 2022 European Drama Lifetime Achievement Award over Churchill's support of Palestine.

Walter is a patron of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, a charity that enables school children across the UK to perform Shakespeare in professional theatres; Prisoners Abroad, a charity that supports Britons imprisoned overseas and their families; and Clean Break, a charity and theatre company dedicated to sharing the stories of imprisoned women and transforming the lives of female offenders through theatre education.

Filmography

Film

Television

Theatre 
 1979, Royal Shakespeare Company, A Midsummer Night's Dream
 1981/82, Royal Shakespeare Company, Helena in All's Well That Ends Well
 1987/88, Royal Shakespeare Company, Imogen in Cymbeline
 1987/88, Royal Shakespeare Company, Viola in Twelfth Night
 1987/88, Royal Shakespeare Company, Dacha in A Question of Geography
 1988, Royal Shakespeare Company, Masha in Chekhov's Three Sisters
 1989/90, Royal Shakespeare Company, Duchess in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi
 1991, Royal Court Theatre (and Broadway transfer), Biddy in Timberlake Wertenbaker's Three Birds Alighting on a Field
 1993, Royal National Theatre, Lady Croom in Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
 1999 Royal Shakespeare Company, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth
 2002 Royal National Theatre Paige in Dinner by Moira Buffini, co-starring Nicholas Farrell and Catherine McCormack
 2005, Donmar Warehouse and West End, Mary Stuart by Schiller
 2006, Royal Shakespeare Company, Antony and Cleopatra
 2009, Mary Stuart, Broadway transfer
 2010, Royal National Theatre, Women Beware Women
 2012/13 Donmar Warehouse, Brutus in Julius Caesar
 2014, Donmar Warehouse, King Henry IV in Henry IV.
 2015, Royal Shakespeare Company and the Noël Coward Theatre, Linda Loman in Death of a Salesman
 2016, Donmar Warehouse, Prospero in The Tempest.

Radio 
 Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation
 The Vortex by Noël Coward, BBC Radio 3, 2 January 2000, as Florence Lancaster
 Scenes of Seduction, radio play written by Timberlake Wertenbaker and directed by Ned Chaillet, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 7 March 2005 – Catherine.
 Desmond Olivier Dingle (as herself), broadcast on BBC7 on 28 February 2007, episode 2 of 6, duration 30 minutes
 The Arts and How they was done (as herself), broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between 4 April and 9 May 2007, episodes 1 and 6 out of 6, duration 30 minutes
 I, Claudius, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 December 2010 – Livia, wife of Augustus.
 Guest in Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4 on 26 June 2011.
 Time and the Conways as Mrs. Conway in BBC Radio 3's adaptation of J.B. Priestley's play, broadcast on 14 September 2014.

Honours 
She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2000 New Year Honours and promoted to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to drama.

In 2001 she and Kenneth Branagh were both given honorary doctorates and honorary fellowships at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford.

Her performance in Mary Stuart at the Donmar Warehouse transferred to Broadway, where it was nominated for numerous Tony Awards, including Best Actress nods for her and her co-star Janet McTeer.

Bibliography 
 Clamorous Voices: Shakespeare's Women Today (1988). Women's Press, .
 Players of Shakespeare 3 (1994). Cambridge University Press, .
 Macbeth (Actors on Shakespeare) (2002). Faber and Faber, London. 
 Other People's Shoes (2003). Nick Hern Books, London. . Autobiography.
 Facing It, Reflections on Images of Older Women (2010). Self Published, London. 
 Brutus and Other Heroines: Playing Shakespeare's Roles for Women (2016). Nick Hern Books, London.

References

External links 
 
 Company Members : Harriet Walter at the Royal National Theatre
 Facingitpublications.co.uk

1950 births
20th-century English actresses
21st-century English actresses
Living people
Alumni of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art
Audiobook narrators
Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire
English feminists
English film actresses
English radio actresses
English stage actresses
English television actresses
English voice actresses
English women writers
Laurence Olivier Award winners
Actresses from London
Royal Shakespeare Company members
English Shakespearean actresses
Actresses awarded damehoods
People educated at Cranborne Chase School
Walter family