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 she died Thursday at her home in London after a short illness. He said she had recently completed filming “‘The Great Escaper,” in which co-starred with Michael Caine.
Jackson was one of the biggest British stars of the 1960s and 70s, and won two Academy Awards, for “Women in Love” in 1970 and “A Touch of Class" in 1973.
She then went into politics, winning election to Parliament in 1992. She spent 23 years as a Labour Party lawmaker, serving as a minister for transport in Prime Minister Tony Blair’s first government in 1997.
She came to be at odds with Blair over the 2003 invasion of Iraq. She said Blair's decision to enter the U.S.-led war without United Nations' authorization left her “deeply, deeply ashamed.”
“The victims will be as they always are, women, children, the elderly,” she told The Associated Press before the invasion.
Jackson returned to acting after leaving Parliament in 2015 and had some of her most acclaimed roles, including the title character in Shakespeare's “King Lear.”
