LONDON (AP) – Glenda Jackson, a two-time Academy Award-winning performer who had a second career in politics as a British lawmaker, has died at 87.
Jackson’s agent, Lionel Larner, said he died Thursday at his home in London after a short illness. He said he had recently finished filming “‘The Great Escaper,'” in which he co-starred with Michael Caine.
Jackson was one of the biggest British stars of the 1960s and 1970s, winning two Academy Awards, for “Women in Love” in 1970 and “A Touch of Class” in 1973.
She then turned to politics, winning election to Parliament in 1992. She spent 23 years as a Labor MP, serving as transport minister in Prime Minister Tony Blair’s first government in 1997.
She came to be at odds with Blair over the invasion of Iraq in 2003. She said Blair’s decision to enter the US-led war without UN authorization left her “deeply, deeply ashamed”.
“The victims will be as they always are, women, children, the elderly,” he told The Associated Press before the invasion.
Jackson returned to acting after leaving Parliament in 2015 and had some of his most acclaimed roles, including the title character in Shakespeare’s “King Lear.”
