British Actresses You Should Know: Fiona Shaw

I’m embarrassed to admit that up until the last five years, or so I only knew Fiona Shaw as Aunt Petunia from the Harry Potter franchise. Maybe like me, you weren’t aware of her stellar stage career; that she was part of the “new wave” of actors to emerge from RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) in the 70s and early 80s. Jonathan Pryce, Juliet Stevenson, Alan Rickman, Janet McTeer, Kenneth Branagh, and Mark Rylance were her peers.

Born Fiona Mary Wilson, Shaw is Irish, County Cork-born and raised by an eye surgeon father and a physicist mother. At her parents’ insistence, she went to university. After earning a philosophy degree from University College Cork, Shaw was free to pursue her true calling as an actor. With a RADA acting diploma under her belt, Ms. Shaw was on to the National Theatre and, after that, the Royal Shakespeare company. The accolades for her stage performances from the mid-80s to the mid-’00s are too numerous to list here.

However, I will mention two examples demonstrating her boldly unique talents. Shaw’s foray into Shakespearean male drag in Richard II (1995) and her award-winning 1996 American stage debut, a solo adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s masterpiece, The Wasteland. She has returned to performing the famous poem multiple times in her career. While fewer of us have had the good fortune to witness Shaw’s stage prowess, many have taken note of her talents on the big and small screens. Here is a sampling of the various characters and genres Fiona Shaw has embodied over the past three-plus decades.