Suzanna Hamilton
- Actress
- Soundtrack
British actress Suzanna Hamilton's first major screen role was as Izz Huett in Roman Polanski's "Tess" (1979). She went on to feature in many more motion-pictures and television dramas including Michael Radford's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1984) opposite John Hurt, and Sydney Pollack's "Out of Africa" (1985) with Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. More recently she has featured in the BBC's long running TV series "Silent Witness" and UK independent feature film "My Feral Heart" (2016). As well as her work on screen, Suzanna continues to do theater and voice work.
Suzanna was discovered in the early 1970s by filmmaker Claude
Whatham, at age 12, in a children's experimental theater in north
London. She starred in her first feature "Swallows and Amazons", based
on the popular Arthur Ransome children's book, in 1974. Whatham also
cast her as Princess Alexandra in the BBC miniseries, "Disraeli".
Hamilton first received training in acting at the Anna Scher Theatre
School and later, at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
Suzanna's first major screen role was Izz Huett, the lovesick
dairymaid, in Roman Polanski's 1979 film "Tess", based on the classic
Thomas Hardy novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles", which featured
Nastassja Kinski in the title role.
Her next significant role was in Richard Loncraine's 1982 film
"Brimstone and Treacle", based on Dennis Potter's play of the same
name. In this film, Suzanna starred as Patricia Bates, the traumatized,
catatonic daughter of a devoutly religious, middle-aged Home Counties
couple whose lives are changed by a demonic drifter and con man
portrayed by Sting. She was also featured the following year, in the
BBC television mystery "A Pattern of Roses", with a young Helena
Bonham Carter.
Suzanna's next major motion-picture appearance is also her most famous
and, arguably, her finest. In "Nineteen Eighty-Four", she was perfectly
cast as Julia in writer/director Michael Radford's film adaptation of
George Orwell's classic dystopian novel. Her uncommonly bold, affecting
performance, opposite John Hurt's Winston Smith, earned her some
notoriety and a bit of a minor cult following over the years as the
film's reputation has steadily grown.
1985 was a very busy year. She starred opposite Vanessa Redgrave in
British playwright David Hare's "Wetherby". As Karen Creasy,
Hamilton's character is the sullen former friend of a young man who
committed suicide, and she represents the emotional void at the heart
of contemporary British life with all its repressions, denials, and
disaffection -- "a central disfiguring blankness" as one character
calls it. Her next role was as the equestrienne, Felicity, in Sydney
Pollack's Oscar-winning "Out of Africa", based on the memoirs of the
famed Danish writer, Karen Blixen (aka "Isak Dinesen") opposite Meryl
Streep; a role that was an amalgam based on Beryl Markham and others.
Her subsequent screen roles were mostly in European films made in
exotic locations, as well as numerous British television dramas. She
played a saxophonist in an all-woman band touring colonial dives in
southeast Asia in the 1987 German film "Devil's Paradise", shot in
Thailand and based on a Joseph Conrad story. In 1988, she starred in
another low-budget German film, a short called "The Voice", opposite
British cult actor Jon Finch (of Polanski's "Macbeth" and
Hitchcock's "Frenzy" fame).
Hamilton also starred in the well-received 1986 television drama
"Johnny Bull" with Peter MacNicol, Jason Robards, Colleen Dewhurst,
and Kathy Bates. She next played the winsome Anglo-French spy, Matty
Firman, in "Wish Me Luck", a British World War II miniseries, and
starred in the miniseries based on Barbara Taylor Bradford's "Hold the
Dream."
In the 1989 BBC miniseries "Never Come Back", she made a striking
appearance as the inscrutable femme fatale, Anna Raven, a murky,
nourish conspiracy thriller set on the eve of the London blitz. Suzanna
also turned in an admirable performance in the excellent 1990 British
television film "Small Zones", as a strong-willed Russian poetess
whose subversive writings have led to her indefinite imprisonment in a
bleak Soviet holding cell. This was followed by a supporting role in a
1992 TV film of Barbara Cartland's Regency-period bodice-ripper "Duel
of Hearts".
1992's low-budget Gothic horror romance "Tale of a Vampire", written
and directed by Shimako Sato, a 27-year-old Japanese-British film
student, features Suzanna in a dual appearance, as both Ann, a
librarian mourning the death of her boyfriend, and as Virgina Clemm,
the wife of Edgar Allan Poe and long-lost love of a lonely melancholic
vampire played by Julian Sands.
Suzanna had a recurring role In the 1990s as Dr. Karen Goodliffe on the
British TV hospital dramatic series "Casualty". Her character had to
be written out of the show after Hamilton became pregnant in early
1993. In 1997's "Island on Bird Street", a Danish period drama made in
the Dogme 95-style, concerning an orphaned Jewish boy who dodges the
Nazis in occupied Europe during World War II, Suzanna has a brief cameo
as the mother of a girl whom the boy befriends.
Suzanna Hamilton is also an accomplished theater and radio actress. She
made her first West End appearance in 1982, starring in Tom Stoppard's
play "The Real Thing". In 1993, she played the lead as a Welsh maid
who gets in over her head in the Bush Theater production of Lucinda
Coxon's "Waiting at the Water's Edge". She was cast as Creusa in a Gate
Theater 2002 production of Euripides's "Ion", and in early 2005,
Hamilton appeared as Dora, a tough, bereaved, guilt-ridden lesbian
incarcerated in a 1920s asylum in the production of Charlotte Jones's
chamber drama "Airswimming", at the Salisbury Playhouse. She also lent
her voice to a 1991 audio-book recording of Julian Barnes' novel about
a love triangle called "Talking It Over".
Suzanna was discovered in the early 1970s by filmmaker Claude
Whatham, at age 12, in a children's experimental theater in north
London. She starred in her first feature "Swallows and Amazons", based
on the popular Arthur Ransome children's book, in 1974. Whatham also
cast her as Princess Alexandra in the BBC miniseries, "Disraeli".
Hamilton first received training in acting at the Anna Scher Theatre
School and later, at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
Suzanna's first major screen role was Izz Huett, the lovesick
dairymaid, in Roman Polanski's 1979 film "Tess", based on the classic
Thomas Hardy novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles", which featured
Nastassja Kinski in the title role.
Her next significant role was in Richard Loncraine's 1982 film
"Brimstone and Treacle", based on Dennis Potter's play of the same
name. In this film, Suzanna starred as Patricia Bates, the traumatized,
catatonic daughter of a devoutly religious, middle-aged Home Counties
couple whose lives are changed by a demonic drifter and con man
portrayed by Sting. She was also featured the following year, in the
BBC television mystery "A Pattern of Roses", with a young Helena
Bonham Carter.
Suzanna's next major motion-picture appearance is also her most famous
and, arguably, her finest. In "Nineteen Eighty-Four", she was perfectly
cast as Julia in writer/director Michael Radford's film adaptation of
George Orwell's classic dystopian novel. Her uncommonly bold, affecting
performance, opposite John Hurt's Winston Smith, earned her some
notoriety and a bit of a minor cult following over the years as the
film's reputation has steadily grown.
1985 was a very busy year. She starred opposite Vanessa Redgrave in
British playwright David Hare's "Wetherby". As Karen Creasy,
Hamilton's character is the sullen former friend of a young man who
committed suicide, and she represents the emotional void at the heart
of contemporary British life with all its repressions, denials, and
disaffection -- "a central disfiguring blankness" as one character
calls it. Her next role was as the equestrienne, Felicity, in Sydney
Pollack's Oscar-winning "Out of Africa", based on the memoirs of the
famed Danish writer, Karen Blixen (aka "Isak Dinesen") opposite Meryl
Streep; a role that was an amalgam based on Beryl Markham and others.
Her subsequent screen roles were mostly in European films made in
exotic locations, as well as numerous British television dramas. She
played a saxophonist in an all-woman band touring colonial dives in
southeast Asia in the 1987 German film "Devil's Paradise", shot in
Thailand and based on a Joseph Conrad story. In 1988, she starred in
another low-budget German film, a short called "The Voice", opposite
British cult actor Jon Finch (of Polanski's "Macbeth" and
Hitchcock's "Frenzy" fame).
Hamilton also starred in the well-received 1986 television drama
"Johnny Bull" with Peter MacNicol, Jason Robards, Colleen Dewhurst,
and Kathy Bates. She next played the winsome Anglo-French spy, Matty
Firman, in "Wish Me Luck", a British World War II miniseries, and
starred in the miniseries based on Barbara Taylor Bradford's "Hold the
Dream."
In the 1989 BBC miniseries "Never Come Back", she made a striking
appearance as the inscrutable femme fatale, Anna Raven, a murky,
nourish conspiracy thriller set on the eve of the London blitz. Suzanna
also turned in an admirable performance in the excellent 1990 British
television film "Small Zones", as a strong-willed Russian poetess
whose subversive writings have led to her indefinite imprisonment in a
bleak Soviet holding cell. This was followed by a supporting role in a
1992 TV film of Barbara Cartland's Regency-period bodice-ripper "Duel
of Hearts".
1992's low-budget Gothic horror romance "Tale of a Vampire", written
and directed by Shimako Sato, a 27-year-old Japanese-British film
student, features Suzanna in a dual appearance, as both Ann, a
librarian mourning the death of her boyfriend, and as Virgina Clemm,
the wife of Edgar Allan Poe and long-lost love of a lonely melancholic
vampire played by Julian Sands.
Suzanna had a recurring role In the 1990s as Dr. Karen Goodliffe on the
British TV hospital dramatic series "Casualty". Her character had to
be written out of the show after Hamilton became pregnant in early
1993. In 1997's "Island on Bird Street", a Danish period drama made in
the Dogme 95-style, concerning an orphaned Jewish boy who dodges the
Nazis in occupied Europe during World War II, Suzanna has a brief cameo
as the mother of a girl whom the boy befriends.
Suzanna Hamilton is also an accomplished theater and radio actress. She
made her first West End appearance in 1982, starring in Tom Stoppard's
play "The Real Thing". In 1993, she played the lead as a Welsh maid
who gets in over her head in the Bush Theater production of Lucinda
Coxon's "Waiting at the Water's Edge". She was cast as Creusa in a Gate
Theater 2002 production of Euripides's "Ion", and in early 2005,
Hamilton appeared as Dora, a tough, bereaved, guilt-ridden lesbian
incarcerated in a 1920s asylum in the production of Charlotte Jones's
chamber drama "Airswimming", at the Salisbury Playhouse. She also lent
her voice to a 1991 audio-book recording of Julian Barnes' novel about
a love triangle called "Talking It Over".