Vice-President of LAMDA
After graduating from the University of the Witwatersrand and studying for the stage at LAMDA, Janet Suzman started her career in the UK with the RSC’s blockbuster opening season The Wars Of The Roses, at Stratford-on-Avon; followed by Portia, Rosalind, Katharina, Beatrice, Lavinia and Cleopatra - also filmed for TV. In London, and elsewhere over the years, she has played in Goldsmith, Genet, Fugard, Chekhov, Pinter, Harwood, Albee, Brecht, Racine, Marlowe, Wasserstein, Nicholson, Ibsen, et al.
The Singing Detective, The Clayhanger Trilogy, The Draughtsman’s Contract, Nicholas And Alexandra, Fellini’s E La Nave Va, A Dry White Season, Mountbatten Of India, are a few of the many TV and feature films she has appeared in.
Janet is a Patron of The Market Theatre in her native Johannesburg and in 1976 played in its inaugural production The Death Of Bessie Smith with John Kani. A decade later she made her debut as a director with Othello - also filmed for Channel Four TV - which won an AA Vita Best Production Award. Her Death Of A Salesman for Theatr Clwd was awarded the Liverpool Echo Best Production Award. She has written and directed her own versions, radically changed to contemporary South African settings, of Brecht’s Good Person Of Setzuan and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, renamed The Free State. This opened at The Birmingham Repertory Theatre in association with The Market Theatre and won the Barclays TMA Best Director Award, 1998. She has recently directed Hamlet for The Baxter Theatre, Cape Town and the Grahamstown Arts Festival.
Janet has twice won The Evening Standard Best Actress Award, and had Academy Award and Golden Globe Nominations for Nicholas And Alexandra. She holds Hon. D. Lit. degrees from the Universities of Warwick, Leicester, London (QMW), Southampton, Middlesex and Kingston.