Sarah Miles (born 31 December 1941) is a retired English actress. She is known for her roles in films The Servant (1963), Blowup (1966), Ryan's Daughter (1970), The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973), White Mischief (1987) and Hope and Glory (1987). For her performance in Ryan's Daughter, Miles received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Sarah Miles | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Miles in 1980 | |
| Born | 31 December 1941 Ingatestone, Essex, England |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1961–2004 |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 1 |
| Relatives | Christopher Miles (brother) |
Early life
editSarah Miles was born in Ingatestone, Essex, in south east England; her brother was film director, producer, and screenwriter Christopher Miles. Miles's parents were Clarice Vera Remnant and John Miles, of a family of engineers; her father's inability to secure a divorce from his first wife meant Miles and her siblings were illegitimate.[1] Per Miles's own account, her maternal grandfather, Frank Remnant, was the illegitimate son of Prince Francis of Teck (1870–1910), which would make Miles a second cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth II.[2][3] Unable to speak until the age of nine because of a stammer[4] and dyslexia,[5] she attended Roedean and three other schools but was expelled from all of them.[4] Miles enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), graduating in 1960 with an Acting (RADA Diploma).[6]
Career
editEarly career
editShortly after finishing at RADA, Miles performed in an episode of the TV series Deadline Midnight titled "Manhunt". Her film debut was as Shirley Taylor, a "husky wide-eyed nymphet"[7] in Term of Trial (1962), which featured Laurence Olivier; she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer.
Miles appeared in The Rehearsal (1963) for TV and then played Vera from Manchester in Joseph Losey's The Servant (1963), and "thrust sexual appetite into British films" according to David Thomson.[7]
Miles was in a short directed by her brother, The Six-Sided Triangle (1963) and a feature film directed by and starring Laurence Harvey, The Ceremony (1963). She did Ring Round the Moon (1964) for TV.
16 June 1965 saw the release of Ken Annakin's Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, a British period comedy film revolving around the craze of early aviation circa 1910. A pompous newspaper magnate (Robert Morley) is convinced, by his daughter (Miles) and her fiancé (James Fox), to organise an air race from London to Paris. A large sum of money is offered to the winner, hence it attracts a variety of characters who participate. The film received positive reviews, described as funny, colourful and clever, capturing the early enthusiasm for aviation.[8][9][10]
She was in Time Lost and Time Remembered (1966), directed by Desmond Davis.
In 1966, Miles gained another BAFTA nomination, this time as Best Actress. She had a "peripheral" part in Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup.[7] At Antonioni's death in 2007, she referred to him as "a rogue and a tyrant and a brilliant man".[11]
Robert Bolt
editAfter acting in several plays from 1966 to 1969, Miles was cast as Rosy in the leading title role of David Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970). It was critically savaged, which discouraged Lean from making a film for some years, despite Miles's performance gaining her an Oscar nomination and an Oscar win for John Mills, and the film making a substantial profit. In Terence Pettigrew's biography of Trevor Howard, Miles describes the filming of Ryan's Daughter in Ireland in 1969. She recalls, "My main memory is of sitting on a hilltop in a caravan at six in the morning in the rain. There was no other actor or member of the crew around me. I would sit there getting mad, waiting for either the rain to stop or someone to arrive. Film-acting is so horrifically belittling."[12]
Miles married the film's screenwriter, Robert Bolt. He wrote and directed Lady Caroline Lamb (1972) starring Miles in the title role.[13] She then appeared in The Hireling (1973).
On 11 February 1973, while filming The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, aspiring screenwriter David Whiting, who was briefly one of her lovers,[14] was found dead in her motel room. She was acquitted of culpability in his death.[4][15] Miles later commented: "It went on for six months. Murder? Suicide? Murder! Suicide! Murder! Suicide! And, gradually, the truth came out, which I'm not going to speak about, but it certainly wasn't me. I had actually saved the man from three suicide attempts, so why would I want to murder him? I really can't imagine."[4] This led to the end of her first marriage to Bolt.
Television
editMiles starred in some TV movies: Great Expectations (1974), Requiem for a Nun (1975), and Dynasty (1976) as well as the Spanish film Bride to Be (1975).
Her performance as Anne Osborne in The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1976) was nominated for a Golden Globe.
Miles appeared in The Big Sleep (1978), Venom (1981), Walter and June (1983), Ordeal by Innocence (1984), Steaming (1985), Harem (1986) and Queenie (1987).
She received great acclaim for Hope and Glory. Interviewer Lynn Barber wrote of Miles' appearances in Hope and Glory, White Mischief, and her two earliest films that she "has that Vanessa Redgrave quality of seeming to have one skin fewer than normal people, so that the emotion comes over unmuffled and bare."[5]
Filming White Mischief on location in Kenya in 1987, Miles worked for the second and last time with Trevor Howard, who had a supporting role, but was by then seriously ill from alcoholism. The company wanted to fire him, but Miles was determined that Howard's distinguished film career would not end that way. In an interview with Terence Pettigrew for his biography of Howard, she describes how she gave an ultimatum to the executives, threatening to quit the production if they got rid of him. The gamble worked. Howard was kept on. It was his last major film; he died the following January.
Later career
editShe appeared in A Ghost in Monte Carlo (1990), The Touch (1992), Dandelion Dead (1994), Jurij (2001) and The Accidental Detective (2004).
She most recently (2008) appeared in Well at the Trafalgar Studios and the Apollo Theatre opposite Natalie Casey.[citation needed]
Personal life
editMiles was married twice to the British playwright Robert Bolt, 1967–1975 and 1988–1995.[16] He wrote and directed the film Lady Caroline Lamb, in which Miles played the eponymous heroine, and wrote Ryan's Daughter, as well. After his stroke, the couple reunited and Miles cared for him. "I would be dead without her", Bolt said in 1987, "When she's away, my life takes a nosedive. When she returns, my life soars."[17] The couple had a son.[18] Miles stated, in 2007, that she had been drinking her own urine for 30 years for health reasons.[4] In 2016, she reported that she had written a sequel to Ryan's Daughter.[19]
Filmography
editTelevision
edit| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1961 | Deadline Midnight | Vi Vernon | |
| 1965 | Sunday Night At The London Palladium | Herself | |
| 1974 | Great Expectations | Estella | |
| 1976 | Dynasty | Jennifer Blackwood | |
| 1983 | Walter and June | June | |
| 1987 | Queenie | Lady Sybil | |
| 1990 | A Ghost in Monte Carlo | Emilie/Mme. Bluet | |
| 1994 | Dandelion Dead | Catherine Armstrong | TV mini-series |
| 2004 | Poirot: The Hollow | Lady Angkatell |
Books
editSarah Miles has written the following books:
- A Right Royal Bastard. Pan Book. 1994. p. 368. ISBN 0-330-33142-6.
1st part of memoirs
- Serves Me Right. Macmillan. 1994. p. 384. ISBN 0-333-60141-6.
2nd part of memoirs
- Bolt from the Blue. Phoenix. 1997. p. 272. ISBN 0-7538-0229-5.
- Beautiful Mourning. Orion. 1998. p. 352. ISBN 0-7528-0140-6.
Other work
editIn 1995, Miles was one of the readers of Edward Lear poems on a specially made spoken word audio CD bringing together a collection of Lear's nonsense songs.[21]
References
edit- ^ A Right Royal Bastard, Sarah Miles, Macmillan, 1993, p. 26
- ^ Sarah Miles, A Right Royal Bastard (1993), p. 20: "Clarice... the eldest child of Francis (Frank) Remnant, bastard son of Prince Francis of Teck, Queen Mary's brother. Sexy old Frank, as he was known, came over when Mary married Prince George, who became George V, and had a cuddle with the seamstress in the White Lodge at Richmond."
- ^ Rhoda Koenig, BOOK REVIEW Confessions of a wilful Pusscat: 'A Right Royal Bastard' dated Sunday 12 December 1993 at independent.co.uk. Retrieved 2 December 2011
- ^ a b c d e Barry Egan "I can't wait to get off this planet", The Independent (Ireland), 16 September 2007 archived 13 April 2010
- ^ a b Lynn Barber "Interview: Out to lunch with Sarah", The Independent, 12 July 1992
- ^ "RADA Student & graduate profiles - Sarah Miles". Retrieved 1 July 2023.
- ^ a b c David Thomson A New Biographical Dictionary of Film, London: Little Brown, 2002, p.594
- ^ Crowther, Bosley (17 June 1965). "Movie Review: Those Magnificent Men In their Flying Machines (1965)". The New York Times.
- ^ "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines – Or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes". Variety. 1 January 1965. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
- ^ "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines – Or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes: TV Guide Review". TV Guide.com. Retrieved 18 February 2010.
- ^ "Blow-Up director Antonioni dies", BBC News, 31 July 2007
- ^ Terence Pettigrew Trevor Howard: A Personal Biography, London: Peter Owen, 2001, p.149
- ^ Movies: Bolt of lighting hits the screen... Martin, James. Chicago Tribune 4 Mar 1973: e10.
- ^ Christopher Hastings "Sarah Miles: Sex, Spooks and Steven Spielberg", The Sunday Telegraph, 7 September 2008
- ^ Ron Rosenbaum, "The Corpse as Big as the Ritz", The Secret Parts of Fortune (reprinted from Esquire)
- ^ Calder, John (23 February 1995). "Obituary: Robert Bolt". The Independent. Retrieved 6 February 2012.
- ^ John Stark "Sarah Miles Stars in An Incredible Story of Scandal and Love—and No, It's Not Her New Film, Hope and Glory, It's Her Life", People, 28:21, 23 November 1987, archive-url, archived 15 October 2017
- ^ "Case Study". Caroline Phillips. Retrieved 25 July 2014.
- ^ O'Sullivan, Majella (19 March 2016). "'I was so innocent in the 60s, but Robert Mitchum corrupted me'". The Independent. Independent Newspapers (Ireland) Limited. Retrieved 2 December 2019.
- ^ VHS Tape – 1992 R&G VIDEO L.P. Sherman Oaks, CA 91403. ISBN 1-56068-536-0
- ^ Nonsense songs (Audiobook on CD, 1995) [WorldCat.org]. Libcat.calacademy.org. 4 January 2019. ISBN 9781898608219. Archived from the original on 15 February 2022. Retrieved 16 March 2021.
External links
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