page_title: Becky Sharp
section_title: Dramatic portrayals
hierarchical_section_title: Becky Sharp / Dramatic portrayals
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: Delcher &amp; Hennessy present Miss Coghlan as Becky Sharp in Thackeray's Vanity fair Abstract/medium: 1 print&#160;: black and white lithograph&#160;; sheet 71 x 105 cm. (poster format)
context_page_description: Rebecca "Becky" Sharp, later describing herself as Rebecca, Lady Crawley, is the main protagonist of William Makepeace Thackeray's 1847–48 novel Vanity Fair. She is presented as a cynical social climber who uses her charms to fascinate and seduce upper-class men. This is in contrast with the clinging, dependent Amelia Sedley, her friend from school. Becky then uses Amelia as a stepping stone to gain social position. Sharp functions as a picara—a picaresque heroine—by being a social outsider who is able to expose the manners of the upper gentry to ridicule. The book—and Sharp's career—begins in a traditional manner of Victorian fiction, that of a young orphan with no source of income. who has to make her own way in the world. Thackeray twisted the Victorian tradition, however, and quickly turned her into a young woman who knew what she wanted from life—fine clothes, money and a social position—and knew how to get them. The route was to be by marriage, and the novel follows Sharp's efforts at snaring a wealthy, but simple, husband, and being outdone by fate in her attempt. Eventually, she achieves her aims, but her husband catches her with a member of the aristocracy.
context_section_description: In 1899, Langdon Mitchell's production of Vanity Fair toured the United States with Minnie Maddern Fiske as Sharp, a role Fiske received critical praise for. The following year his production was plagiarised by Gertrude Coghlan's Delcher & Hennessy theatre company, with herself in the lead role, until Mitchell sued.
  The first film version of Vanity Fair was released in 1915. This was a silent movie directed by Charles Brabin and also starring Fiske in the main role. Another silent version, directed by Walter Courtney Rowden and starring Kyrie Bellew, was made and released in Britain seven years later. The following year saw another silent production released by Samuel Goldwyn; this was directed by Hugo Ballin and starred his wife, Mabel, as Sharp. The film is now considered lost.
  The first spoken-word release was Chester M. Franklin's 1932 film of Vanity Fair, with Sharp played by Myrna Loy; her marriage scene was filmed in Boston's Louisburg Square, representing Russell Square in London. Three years later Miriam Hopkins played Sharp in Rouben Mamoulian's production, which was the first feature film to use three-strip Technicolor. Hopkins was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal. Reese Witherspoon played Sharp in Mira Nair's 2004 film based on the novel; Rotten Tomatoes criticized the film's version of the character, writing "A more likable Becky Sharp makes for a less interesting movie."
  Vanity Fair has also been produced numerous times for television. The first, for the BBC in 1967, starred Susan Hampshire. This was followed twenty years later, also by the BBC at the Pebble Mill studios, with Eve Matheson as Sharp. Andrew Davies wrote the screenplay of a BBC television drama of Vanity Fair which was screened in 1998; Natasha Little played Becky Sharp. Little won the Best Actress in a Drama Series category in the following year's Biarritz International Television Festival as well as a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her portrayal of Sharp. Olivia Cooke played Sharp in a 2018 television series, screened on ITV over seven episodes.
caption: Gertrude Coghlan as Becky Sharp, 1900
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