|
Fiona Shaw is the actress who plays Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter films. This page provides pictures and a Fiona Shaw biography.
|
Born on the 10th July 1958 in County Cork, Ireland, Fiona Shaw is one of the most established stage actresses on the UK scene. Growing up there was no professional theatre in Cork, but she still did a lot of performing. "A lot of Irish people perform. They perform in drawing rooms. They sing songs and they play piano." She went on to study at RADA and after graduating became a fixture with the Royal Shakespeare Company and London's National Theatre.
In 1990, she received the Laurence Olivier Award (equivalent to Broadway's Tony Awards) for Best Actress for her role as Rosalind in As You Like It, followed by a further Olivier Award for Best Actress and London Critics Award for her performance in The Good Person of Sechuan.
She received a further Laurence Olivier Award and London Critics Award for her portrayal of Electra, again in 1990. This was followed in 1992 by the London Critics Award for her eponymous portrayal of Hedda Gabler and in 1993 she again received the Laurence Olivier Award and Evening Standard Drama Award for Best Actress for Stephen Daldry's Machinal.
Wickedly ironic, voluble and intense offstage, the 36-year-old former philosophy student is wholly unpredictable onstage, routinely skating on the edge of a theatrical cliff. In "The Taming of the Shrew," she wielded a pair of scissors like an incendiary assassin, chopping off chunks of her own hair. As "Electra," she became a woman possessed, tearing across the stage on the verge of madness.
Although Fiona Shaw is often acclaimed as one of our finest classical actresses she has also won quiet applause for her film forays too. She has an eclectic array of film credits, gathering plaudits for her role as a pretentious Anglophile in The Butcher Boy (1997) and stealing the show as the headmistress in Three Men and a Little Lady (1990). Other credits include My Left Foot (1989), Mountains of the Moon (1990), Super Mario Brothers (1993) and Jane Eyre (1996). In 2001 & 2002, Fiona played Petunia Dursley in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone & Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Fiona Shaw was awarded an Officier des Arts et Lettres in France in 2000 and an honorary CBE (Commander of the order of the British Empire) in the 2001 New Years Honours. She was also nominated for Broadway's 2003 Tony Award as Best Actress (Play) for playing the title character in "Medea."
Back
Portrait of actress Fiona Shaw