- Born
- Birth nameFelicity Ann Bragg
- Nickname
- Foo
- Height4′ 11¾″ (1.52 m)
- British leading woman best known at one time for "cute" roles but a formidable actress in a wide variety of parts. Born in England, she was raised in India where her parents Geoffrey Kendal and Laura Liddell toured the nation for decades with a traveling classical theatre troupe called Shakespeareana. Young Felicity first appeared on stage as an infant and grew up doing backstage chores and filling in on stage as boys or various supernumeraries. She attended whatever convent school was immediately convenient and by her teen years was appearing in important Shakespearean roles. Family friends James Ivory and Ismail Merchant fashioned their fictional film Shakespeare-Wallah (1965) around the Kendal troupe and gave Felicity the leading role. She returned to England following the film and struggled for a number of years getting work. She appeared on television opposite John Gielgud and soon thereafter was given the role that made her famous, Barbara Good in the TV series The Good Life (1975), about a couple who decides to live off the land in their decidedly suburban home. She followed "The Good Life" with several other TV programs, but made her most important contributions on the stage. She created roles in a number of plays by Tom Stoppard (with whom she had a highly publicized affair), and continued unabated her lifelong work in Shakespeare, playing Desdemona to Paul Scofield's Othello and a memorable Viola in a BBC production of Twelfth Night (1980). She continues to perform with regularity in London's West End. She was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1995. In 1999, she published her memoirs, "White Cargo."- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>
- SpousesMichael Rudman(1983 - 1990) (divorced, 1 child)Drewe Henley(1968 - 1979) (divorced, 1 child)
- ChildrenJacob Rudman
- Parents
- RelativesJennifer Kendal(Sibling)
- She speaks Hindi, having been brought up in India.
- Romantically involved with Tom Stoppard for most of the 1990s. She later re-united with her second husband.
- Her parents, Laura Liddell and Geoffrey Kendal, used to run a touring Shakespeare company in India. The film Shakespeare-Wallah (1965) was based on their experiences.
- She was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1995 Queen's New Year Honours List for her services to drama.
- She was awarded the 1989 London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress for her performances in William Shakespeare's play, "Much Ado About Nothing" and Anton Chekhov's play, "Ivanov.".
- [In 2010]: George Bernard Shaw was a raving socialist. And mad for feminism, passionate that women should have a right to choose how they live and how and if they work. Also the play ['Mrs Warren's Profession'] is about hypocrisy, about that bubble of respectability. And we're exactly the same now: we seem to be obsessed with infidelity, and prostitution of one kind or another, and the role of women - whether they are naughty tarts who do things with their bodies they shouldn't, or whether they are married and therefore respectable and therefore honoured.
- The problem men seem to have, and women too, is that they have this very structured idea that we should find a partner and settle down and be, you know, faithful. And yet clearly this is really, really hard for anybody to do!
- Quite often you do know of a very happy partnership, married or not, but equally there seems to be the same percentage of people in any walk of life who find it difficult to ... to be entirely, um, what is the word without getting too - ha! ha! - into detail ... who don't quite find that their life is sufficient without an extra excitement of some kind or another. The difficulty is we don't accept that, we're just not being honest.
- So the question is, do we have the freedom to make a life that we choose? Or do we have to stick by society's rules? And it seems to me we still have to stick by society's rules or we pay a penalty. Like any good play it's a question, not an answer.
- In a play the director is God, and I'm a great arguer. Rather boringly so, I think, about trying different things. And the only thing that is different working with Michael is I feel that I can only argue so much, otherwise it may appear to people that I am arguing only because I'm in a position where I can argue longer. It's also the balance of the other actors: like a football team, you are a team, and he is the coach. You can't start having tea with the coach and telling him about the team, you have to keep that separate. So we have a very boring time at home, two little silent people going slinking home after rehearsal.
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