Oscar-winning actress, politician Glenda Jackson dies

Two-time Academy Award winner and British politician Glenda Jackson has died.

She was 87.

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Jackson’s agent confirmed that she died at her home in London after a short illness, The Associated Press reported.

Jackson was born in 1936 in the northwest English town of Birkenhead.

BBC News reported that her father was a bricklayer. She was bored after leaving school at 16, so she joined a drama group at the local YMCA.

“I had no real ambition about acting,” she had said, according to the BBC. “But I knew there had to be something better than the bloody chemist’s shop.”

Jackson later won a scholarship to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

The AP reported that she was one of Britain’s biggest stars in the ‘60s and ‘70s, winning two Oscars, one for “Women in Love” in 1971 and the second for “A Touch of Class” in 1974.

She also appeared as Queen Elizabeth I in the BBC drama “Elizabeth R.” The six-part series followed the queen from princess to “ailing old woman,” the BBC reported.

She shifted her career in 1992, winning a position in Parliament, and eventually spending 23 years serving as a member of the Labour Party. She even served as a minister for transport under Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1997.

However, Jackson was upset with Blair’s decision to enter the war with Iraq in 2003, saying that she was “deeply, deeply ashamed” for the U.K. going into the U.S.-led war without authorization from the United Nations, the AP reported.

“The victims will be as they always are, women, children, the elderly,” she told the AP before the U.K.’s mission began.

She left Parliament in 2015, returning to acting. She played the title character in “King Lear,” first at London’s Old Vic in 2016 and eventually on Broadway.

Jackson then returned to the big screen in 2019′s “Elizabeth is Missing,” winning a BAFTA the next year for her role as a woman living with Alzheimer’s who tries to solve a mystery.

She recently wrapped filming “The Great Escaper” with Michael Caine, BBC News reported. According to IMDB, the film, which is in post-production, is about a man who escapes his personal care home to attend the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. It is based on a true story.

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