Julia McKenzie
Julia McKenzie is an actor, born 1941.
McKenzie's first career was the stage, and specifically the musical stage. She premiered leading roles written by both Alan Ayckbourn and Stephen Sondheim, an unusual pair of loyalties: one writer who hides despair inside English domestic comedy, the other who hides it inside song structure. She has directed in the theatre as well, and the precision of her screen work comes straight out of that training.
Television found her in the 1980s with Fresh Fields, a domestic sitcom that brought her a BAFTA nomination and a sequel, French Fields, which shipped the same couple abroad. Both are gentler than anything she did on stage and both run almost entirely on her timing.
The late career is where the parts got teeth. She joined Agatha Christie's Marple in 2009, five years after the series had begun, and played the detective as watchful rather than twinkly. Around it she assembled a run of sharp supporting turns: Mrs Forrester in Cranford, Marjorie in Notes on a Scandal, Lottie Crump in Bright Young Things, and Shirley Mollison in The Casual Vacancy, a small-town snob written without mercy and played without vanity. Very few actors of her generation moved between musical theatre and that kind of unglamorous character work without losing something in transit.
Movies (6)
TV (7)
Where to start with Julia McKenzie
If you want the screen performance she will be remembered for, go to Agatha Christie's Marple. Her Marple is less coy than the version most people expect, an old woman who has simply decided to say the uncomfortable thing, and the adaptations are handsome enough to carry a wet afternoon.
The better acting, though, is in the supporting parts. The Casual Vacancy hands her the nastiest role of her later career and she plays it completely straight, which is what makes it land. Cranford is the comfort option and she is the funniest thing in it. Notes on a Scandal and Bright Young Things are brief film appearances worth catching for contrast. Purists should start instead with Fresh Fields, where the writing is thin and she is not.