We value Miranda Richardson's taste for varied, often supporting parts, from eccentric comedy to drama. Her forcefulness is less reliable: in The Crying Game, it makes Jude seem simpler than the people around her.
Fi1m perspective
Beside Stephen Rea's uncertainty in The Crying Game (1992), Miranda Richardson's Jude feels too sure of herself. She seems to belong to a simpler thriller than the one Neil Jordan has made. We found Jude frustrating: Richardson's emphatic playing leaves so little room for the mixed feelings that draw us to the central relationship. It is a limitation worth naming in an actor we value for her willingness to take on different kinds of part, without insisting on the largest one.
Her film debut, as Ruth Ellis in Dance with a Stranger (1985), was followed by Queenie in Blackadder II (1986). Those roles established an early movement between drama and eccentric comedy, and Queenie is a reason to take the comedy as seriously as the dramatic work. By Damage (1992), in which she played Ingrid Fleming, dramatic supporting parts had become an important strand of her career. We would not measure the interest of these jobs by how much of the story belongs to her.
Her stated preference is for several small roles with acting to do, rather than one large part without it. The later work includes the villainous Mrs Tweedy in Chicken Run (2000), Rita Skeeter in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), and television in Good Omens (2019). These are choices worth following without demanding that they add up to a steady march towards leading roles. We can appreciate that curiosity and still question what she does within a particular film.
In The Crying Game, Jordan's fondness for surprise already makes us conscious of the screenplay arranging our response. Richardson's forcefulness adds to that pressure, while Rea and Jaye Davidson make the central relationship convincing through feelings that are less readily settled. Her performance is not the only problem, and the film remains worth seeing despite it. Go to it for Rea and Davidson, rather than as a first introduction to Richardson.
Biography
Miranda Richardson is an English actress. She was born on 3 March 1958 in Southport, Lancashire, and trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. She began her career in repertory theatre and made her West End debut in 1981.
Richardson made her film debut as Ruth Ellis in Dance with a Stranger (1985). She played Jude in The Crying Game (1992) and has appeared in Empire of the Sun (1987), Sleepy Hollow (1999), The Hours (2002), The Phantom of the Opera (2004), the Harry Potter films as Rita Skeeter, and voiced Mrs Tweedy in Chicken Run (2000). Her television work includes Blackadder and Good Omens.
She received Academy Award nominations for Damage (1992) and Tom & Viv (1994), and won a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Damage. She has also received Golden Globe Awards and an Olivier Award nomination for stage work.
