Jenny Agutter
Jennifer Ann Agutter OBE (born 20 December 1952) is an English actress. She began her career as a child actress in 1964, appearing in East of Sudan, Star!, and two adaptations of The Railway Children; the BBC's 1968 television serial and the 1970 film version. In 1971 she also starred in the critically acclaimed film Walkabout and the TV film The Snow Goose, for which she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama.
Jenny Agutter
1964–present
1
She relocated to the United States in 1974 to pursue a Hollywood career and subsequently appeared in Logan's Run (1976), Amy (1981), An American Werewolf in London (1981), and Child's Play 2 (1990). During the same period, Agutter continued appearing in high-profile British films, such as The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Equus (1977)—for which she won a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role)—and The Riddle of the Sands (1979). In 1981, she co-starred in The Survivor, an Australian adaptation of the James Herbert novel by that name, and was nominated for an AACTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.
After returning to Britain in the early 1990s to pursue family life, Agutter shifted her focus to television, appearing in the 2000 version of television adaptation of The Railway Children, this time as the mother, and since 2012 she has had an ongoing role in the BBC's Call the Midwife. Her film work in recent years includes The Avengers (2012) and Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), and in 2022, Agutter returned to the world of The Railway Children once more by reprising her role from the 1970 film 52 years later in a sequel, The Railway Children Return.
Agutter is married, and has one adult son. She supports several charitable causes, mostly ones related to cystic fibrosis, a condition from which her niece suffers, and for her service to those causes was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours.
Early life[edit]
Agutter was born on 20 December 1952[1] in Taunton, Somerset, England.[2] She is the daughter of Derek Agutter (an entertainments manager in the British Army) and Catherine, and was raised Roman Catholic.[3][4] She has Irish ancestry on her mother's side.[5] As a child, she lived in Singapore,[6] Dhekelia (Cyprus) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaya). She attended Elmhurst Ballet School,[7] a boarding school, from ages eight to sixteen.[6]
Personal life[edit]
At a 1989 arts festival in Bath, Somerset, Agutter met Johan Tham, a Swedish hotelier[21] who was a director of Cliveden Hotel in Buckinghamshire.[22] They married in August 1990,[23] and their son Jonathan[24] was born on 25 December 1990.[21] Agutter lives in London, but has a keen interest in Cornwall[25] and once owned a second home there on the Trelowarren Estate, in one of the parishes on the Lizard peninsula.[26]
She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours, for her charitable services.[27]
Agutter has been attached to several causes throughout her career. She has been involved in raising awareness of the illness cystic fibrosis, which she believes was responsible for the deaths of two of her siblings. Her niece has the disease. At Agutter's suggestion, an episode of Call the Midwife focused on cystic fibrosis. She has also worked in support of charities, in particular the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, of which she is a patron (she is also a carrier of the genetic mutation).[28][29][30]
Politics[edit]
In August 2014, Agutter was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September 2014's referendum on that issue.[31]
