Oscar Profile #265: Charlotte Rampling

Born February 5, 1946 to painter Isabelle Anne and Olympic gold medalist, army officer, colonel and NATO commander Godfrey Lionel Rampling, (Tessa) Charlotte Rampling would emerge as one of the most distinguished actresses of our time.

Educated in France and England, Rampling was a model before becoming an actress in 1965’s The Kanck…and How to Get It. She became a star in her third film, 1966’s Georgy Girl, although it was her co-stars, Lynn Redgrave and James Mason who received the film’s Oscar nominations. Much on TV for the remainder of the decade, she was notable once again on the big screen in 1969’s The Damned and played Ann Boleyn in the 1972 min-series, Henry VIII and His Six Wives. That same year she married actor Bryan Southcombe. Their son, future actor-director Barnaby Southcombe was born in September of that year.

Rampling had perhaps her most famous early role as the Holocaust survivor who resumes her sadomasochistic relationship with Nazi torturer Dirk Bogarde twelve years after the war in 1974’s The Night Porter. She followed that with her first major Hollywood role in 1975’s Farewell, My Lovely for which co-star Sylvia Miles received the film’s only Oscar nomination. In 1976 she divorced Southcombe and married composer Jean-Michel Jarre, son of three-time Oscar-winning composer Maurice Jarre. Their son, future magician and occasional actor David Jarre was born the following year.

The actress’s most successful film of the 1980s was 1982’s The Verdict opposite Paul Newman and James Mason, both of whom received Oscar nominations while she was left on the sidelines. She continued to work in international films and on British TV throughout that decade and the next, divorcing Jarre in 1996. She had a major supporting role in 1997’s The Wings of the Dove, but Oscar once again only nominated another performer, star Helena Bonham Carter while Rampling was once again ignored.

Her career took another upswing in 2000 when she starred in the French-Japanese co-production Under the Sand for acclaimed director Francois Ozon. She scored an even bigger triumph with Ozon’s 2003 thriller, Swimming Pool.

Rampling’s father Godfrey had been equally famous, having won silver in the 4x400m relay at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, and gold in the 4x400m relay at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin before enjoying his very successful military career. He died on June 20, 2009 at the age of 100.

In recent years Rampling has appeared on screen mainly in supporting roles in such films as Life During Wartime, Never Let Me Go, Melancholia and Night Train to Libson. In 2013 she had a ten episode arc on American TV in Dexter and can currently be seen in the British TV series Broadchurch. She has her best role in years in 45 Years for which she is, for the first time in her fifty year screen career, in serious contention for an Oscar nomination at the age of 69.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

Georgy Girl (1966), directed by Silvio Narizzano

One of the best loved films of the 1960s, Lynn Redgrave won a New York Film Critics award for Best Actress for her star-making performance, tying with Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? . She also won a Golden Globe for Best Actress – Comedy. She and co-star Alan Bates were nominated for Best Newcomer – Female and Male, respectively. Redgrave and veteran James Mason also received Oscar nominations. Rampling, in her first major role as Redgrave’s roommate, was the film’s fourth star and the only one of the film’s four stars not to receive a major acting nomination.

Farewell, My Lovely (1975), directed by Dick Richards

Rampling made her Hollywood debut in this acclaimed third film version of Raymond Chandler’s classic mystery. First filmed with George Sanders and Lynn Bari as 1942’s The Falcon Takes Over and more famously under its original title but then released as Murder, My Sweet with Dick Powell and Claire Trevor in early 1945. Robert Mitchum received some of the best notices of his late career as Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and Rampling received strong notices, but Oscar ignored both, granting only a supporting nod to Sylvia Miles as the film’s early murder victim.

The Verdict (1982), directed by Sidney Lumet

Long regarded as the film in which Paul Newman gave his best late career performance as an alcoholic ambulance-chasing lawyer who takes on the Boston Archdiocese in a landmark case in which he sues to get justice for a family whose loved one died because of a Church owned hospital’s negligence. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay ( David Mamet), Actor (Newman) and Supporting Actor (James Mason), but nothing for the equally fine Jack Warden, Milo O’Shea, Lindsay Crouse or Rampling as Newman’s new found drinking partner.

Under the Sand/Swimming Pool (2001/2003), directed by Francois Ozon

These two psychological French mysteries re-established Rampling as a leading lady with two of the finest acting opportunities of her career. In the first she plays a professor trying to cope with the disappearance of her husband of twenty-five years. Did he drown, or did he run off faking his death? The grief literally drives her mad. In the second she plays a mystery writer whose publisher’s free-spirited daughter sets off an unsettling series of events that lead to a real-life murder. The Hitchcockian twists and turns of the two films make for riveting entertainment in addition to providing world-class lessons in great acting.

45 Years (2015), directed by Andrew Haigh

Rampling and Tom Courtenay won acting prizes at the prestigious 2015 Berlin International Film Festival. The film’s fall release in the U.K. has continued the excitement and the film, which opens in the U.S. on Christmas Day, is already earning year-end awards recognition for Rampling as a woman about to celebrate her 45th wedding anniversary just as the body of her husband’s former lover is discovered. Although both actors have received tremendous praise for their performances, it’s Rampling who suddenly finds herself in the conversation for an Oscar nomination for the first time in her now 50-year-old film career.