Maria Aitken

Known for ActingBorn 1945-09-12 (age 80)Dublin, Ireland

Aitken was born in Dublin, Ireland, the daughter of Sir William Aitken, a Conservative MP, and Penelope Aitken, whose father was John Maffey, 1st Baron Rugby. Her grandfather was the UK Representative to Ireland (1939–49). She is a great-niece of newspaper magnate and war-time minister Lord Beaverbrook, and sister to former Conservative cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken. She attended Riddlesworth Hall Preparatory School in Norfolk, Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset and St Anne's College, Oxford, where she graduated with a degree in English Language and Literature. She has directed several plays in the West End and on Broadway. Her production of The 39 Steps, which ran in London for nine years, also played three years on Broadway and won Olivier and Tony Awards. In 2011, she directed Frank Langella in Man and Boy on Broadway. She is a Visiting Lecturer at Yale, NYU and Juilliard drama schools. Her extensive acting career includes leading roles at the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and in the West End. She has played more Noël Coward leads than any other actress. Her film career includes appearances in Doctor Faustus (1967), Mary, Queen of Scots (1971), Half Moon Street (1986), A Fish Called Wanda (1988) (for which she was nominated for a BAFTA award), The Fool (1990), The Grotesque (1995), Fierce Creatures (1997), Jinnah (1998) and Asylum (2005). She is the author of A Girdle Round the Earth, a story of some of the more remarkable women travellers of the last 200 years, and Style: Acting in High Comedy, published in 1996, which contends that "High comedies are not bloodless, refined, wordy plays — their themes are sex, money and social advancement. They contain a splendid contradiction: wit and elegance at the service of man's basest drives." From WikipediaRead more

Movies & web series

Whinfrey's Last Case

The Fool

Quiet as a Nun

Jemima Shore Investigates

Codename

Poor Little Rich Girls

A Fish Called Wanda

Justice

Dare To Dream: The Making of Jinnah

Jinnah

ITV Playhouse

Spider

Manhunt

Mary, Queen of Scots

Fierce Creatures

Asylum

The Edwardians

Bedroom Farce

Some Girls Do

Crown Court

The Grotesque

Love on a Branch Line

Wogan

Half Moon Street

The Regiment

Michael Caine on Acting in Film, Arts and Entertainment

Don't Be Silly

Romance

Out of the Trees