Imelda Staunton

Info

Full Name: Imelda Staunton
Date of birth: January 9, 1956 (70 years old)
Location: London, England
Country: UK

Imelda Staunton has been active for 34 years, participating in 34 movies that average a 7.1/10 score.

Videos eCartelera

Tráiler en VOSE de 'Harry Potter' T1

Biography

In the summer of 2024, at 68, Imelda Staunton was at the London Palladium doing eight shows a week of 'Hello, Dolly!'. It won her a fifth Olivier Award, and it is the version of her that Britain knows best: a stage actress who sings, who has been nominated fourteen times, and who happens to have a sideline as the most hated teacher in children's cinema.

An only child in Archway

She was born on 9 January 1956 in Archway, north London, the only child of Irish parents from County Mayo. Her father worked as a labourer, her mother ran a hairdressing salon and the family lived above it. Her mother played accordion and fiddle by ear in Irish showbands, which is where the music came from.

She trained at RADA and graduated in 1976, then spent six years in repertory theatre around the country before London took much notice.

Five Oliviers

The first arrived in 1985, for two supporting performances at once, in 'The Corn Is Green' and 'A Chorus of Disapproval'. The other four are all musicals: 'Into the Woods' (1991), 'Sweeney Todd' (2013), 'Gypsy' (2016) and 'Hello, Dolly!' (2024).

In 2025 she went back to straight theatre with Shaw's 'Mrs Warren's Profession' at the Garrick, directed by Dominic Cooke. It ran from May to August and put her onstage with her daughter, Bessie Carter, for the first time, the two of them playing mother and daughter.

Vera Drake

Her screen career began with supporting parts people still remember: 'Peter's Friends' (1992), Charlotte Palmer in 'Sense and Sensibility' (1995), the Nurse in 'Shakespeare in Love' (1998) and Bunty in 'Chicken Run' (2000).

The part that changed things came at 48. In 'Vera Drake' (2004), Mike Leigh cast her as a 1950s cleaner who performs back-street abortions for nothing and doesn't think of herself as a criminal, until the police arrive in the middle of a family dinner.

The film took the Golden Lion at Venice, she took the Volpi Cup for best actress, and then the BAFTA and an Academy Award nomination. She worked with Leigh again on 'Another Year' (2010).

Umbridge, Aunt Lucy and the Queen

Three years later she took the job that made her recognisable everywhere. Dolores Umbridge turned up in 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix' (2007) and returned in 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I' (2010), all pink cardigans and quiet sadism. She played her again in 2025 for the Harry Potter attraction at Universal's Epic Universe in Florida.

She is also Aunt Lucy in all three 'Paddington' films, most recently 'Paddington in Perú' (2024), and one of the three fairies in 'Maleficent' (2014).

Comedy suits her. She was Mrs Santa in 'Arthur Christmas' (2011), Queen Victoria for Aardman in 'The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!' (2012) and, at 61, the lead in 'Finding Your Feet' (2017), as a woman who discovers a dance class after her marriage collapses.

From the same stretch comes 'Pride' (2014), in which she plays Hefina, the Welsh woman who opens her mining village to a group of London lesbian and gay activists during the 1984 strike. The National Theatre turned it into a musical in 2026.

She was Maud Bagshaw in the first two 'Downton Abbey' films, in 2019 and 2022, though not in last year's finale. Her husband has been below stairs in all of them.

On television she had already done the nineties sitcoms 'Up the Garden Path' and 'Is It Legal?', and in 2012 played Alma Reville, Hitchcock's wife and collaborator, in 'The Girl', which brought an Emmy nomination.

Then in 2022 came the most exposed job available to a British actress: Elizabeth II in the last two seasons of 'The Crown', taking the baton from Claire Foy and Olivia Colman. The Queen died while the fifth season was being filmed.

A family business

She has been married to the actor Jim Carter, Downton's Carson, since 1983; they met doing 'Guys and Dolls' the year before. Bessie, born in 1993, acts too and has been in 'Bridgerton'. All three of them live in West Hampstead.

In the 2024 Birthday Honours she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to drama and charity, invested by the Prince of Wales at Windsor that November.

Her latest film is '& Sons', the Argentine director Pablo Trapero's first film in English, written by Sarah Polley. She plays the ex-wife of a celebrated novelist, played by Bill Nighy. It premiered at Toronto in September 2025 and reached British cinemas this August.