Fiona Shaw

Fiona Shaw (born Fiona Mary Wilson; 10 July 1958) is an Irish actress in screen and stage. She did extensive work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, as well as in film and television. In 2020, she was listed at No. 29 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors. She was made an Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2001.^[1]

She won both the 1990 and 1994 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress for roles in the plays Electra, As You Like It, The Good Person of Szechwan (1990), and Machinal (1994) and received a further three Olivier Award nominations for her roles in Mephisto (1986), Hedda Gabler (1992), and Happy Days (2008). She made her Broadway debut playing the title role in Medea (2002) for which she earned a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She returned to Broadway in the Colm Tóibín play The Testament of Mary (2013).

In film, she played Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter film series (2001–2010). Other notable film roles include in My Left Foot (1989), Persuasion (1995), Jane Eyre (1996), The Tree of Life (2011), Colette (2018), Ammonite (2020), and Enola Holmes (2020).

Her television roles include Hedda Hopper in the HBO film RKO 281 (1999), and Marnie Stonebrook in the HBO series True Blood (2011). She played Carolyn Martens in the BBC series Killing Eve (2018–22), for which she received the 2019 BAFTA TV Award for Best Supporting Actress, as well as two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. For her role as a counselor in Fleabag (2019), she received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series nomination. She starred in the BBC One series Baptiste (2021), and the Disney+ series Andor (2022).

Early life

Shaw was born Fiona Mary Wilson on 10 July 1958^[2] in Farranree,^[3] County Cork, Ireland,^[4] the daughter of physicist Mary T. Wilson (née Flynn, born 1927)^[5] and ophthalmic surgeon Denis Joseph Wilson (1922–2011), who wed in 1952. They maintained a home in Montenotte.^[6][7] Her father was of half English descent. The second of four children, she has an older brother, John, and two younger brothers, Mark and Peter, the latter of whom was killed in a car accident aged 18.^[5] She attended secondary school at Scoil Mhuire in Cork, and received her degree in philosophy at University College Cork. Shaw studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London, graduating in 1982 with an Acting (RADA Diploma).^[8] On joining Equity, she had to change her name because they already had a member named Fiona Wilson. She adopted the surname Shaw, which was her grandmother's maiden name, also doing so in tribute to George Bernard Shaw.^[9]

Career

Theatre

In 1983, she starred as Julia in the National Theatre production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals (1983).^[10] Her theatrical roles include Celia in As You Like It (1984), Madame de Volanges in Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1985), Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew (1987), Lady Franjul in The New Inn (1987), Young Woman in Machinal (1993), for which she won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress.

Shaw notably played the male lead in Richard II, directed by Deborah Warner in 1995. She performed T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land as a one-person show at the Liberty Theatre in New York to great acclaim in 1996, winning the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show for her performance.^[11]

Winnie in Happy Days (2007), and the title roles in Electra (1988), The Good Person of Sechuan (1989), Hedda Gabler (1991), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1998) and Medea (2000).

In 2009, Shaw collaborated with Deborah Warner again, taking the lead role in Tony Kushner's translation of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children. In a 2002 article for The Daily Telegraph, Rupert Christiansen described their professional relationship as "surely one of the most richly creative partnerships in theatrical history."^[12] Other collaborations between the two women include productions of Brecht's The Good Woman of Szechuan and Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, the latter was adapted for television.^[13]

In 2010, Shaw appeared in The Waste Land at Wilton's Music Hall, and in a National Theatre revival of London Assurance.^[14] In November 2010, Shaw starred in Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin alongside Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan.^[15][16] The play was also staged in New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2011.^[17] In 2012, Shaw appeared in the National Theatre revival of Scenes from an Execution by Howard Barker. The world's largest solo theatre festival, United Solo, recognised her performance in The Testament of Mary on Broadway with the 2013 United Solo Special Award.

Television and film

In 1984, Shaw played Miss Morrison in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes episode The Adventure of the Crooked Man. She appeared in My Left Foot (1989), Mountains of the Moon (1990), Three Men and a Little Lady (1990), Super Mario Bros. (1993), Undercover Blues (1993), Persuasion (1995), Jane Eyre (1996), The Butcher Boy (1997), The Avengers (1998), Gormenghast (2000), and five of the Harry Potter films in which she played Petunia Dursley, Harry Potter's repressed maternal aunt. Shaw had a brief but key role in Brian DePalma's The Black Dahlia (2006).

Shaw appeared in season four of the American TV show True Blood.^[4][18] Shaw's character, Marnie Stonebrook, has been described as an underachieving palm reader who is spiritually possessed by an actual witch.^[19]

In 2013, she starred as Catherine Greenshaw in Agatha Christie's Marple episode "Greenshaw's Folly".

In 2018, Shaw began portraying Carolyn Martens, the head of MI6's Russia-focused branch, in BBC America's Killing Eve. For her performance, she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Television Series.^[20] Later the same year, she played a senior MI6 officer in Mrs Wilson.^[21] For her role as a counselor in Phoebe Waller-Bridge series Fleabag (2019) she received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series nomination.^[22][23]

In 2020, she was listed at No. 29 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.^[24]

Shaw starred in the Star Wars television series Andor as the titular character's adoptive mother, Maarva Andor.^[25] For her work in Andor, Shaw was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress.^[26]

In October 2022, Shaw was awarded an AudioFile Magazine Earphone Award for her performance of The Bullet That Missed, the third book in Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club series.^[27]

In 2024, she portrayed Rose Aguineau, a woman with a mysterious past who aids the protagonists, in season 4 of True Detective. Later in the same year, she also appeared as Angelica Muldoon in season 2 of Bad Sisters.

Personal life

Shaw is gay, although she had been in two relationships with men before realising her sexual orientation, stating "it was a shock. I was full of self-hatred and thought I would come back into the fold shortly. But I just didn't."^[28]

From 2002 to 2005, Shaw was the partner of English actress Saffron Burrows.^[29] She met Sri Lankan economist Sonali Deraniyagala after reading Deraniyagala's memoir,^[30] and they married in 2018.^[31] Shaw lives in Islington, North London, having previously lived in nearby Primrose Hill, "within earshot of London Zoo".^[30]

Shaw was raised Catholic, and in January 1997, she spent two weeks with the Tyburn Nuns at their convent.^[32]

Acting credits

Film

Television

Theatre

Other projects

• When Love Speaks (2002, EMI Classics): "It is thy will thy image should keep open"
• Simon Schama's John Donne: 2009^[93][94]

Awards and nominations