Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave, CBE (20 March 1908 – 21 March 1985) was an English stage and film actor, director, manager and author.

Youth and education

Redgrave was born in Bristol, Gloucestershire, England, the son of the silent film actor Roy Redgrave and actress Margaret Scudamore. He never knew his father, who left when he was only six months old to pursue a career in Australia. His mother subsequently married Captain James Anderson, a tea planter, but Redgrave greatly disliked his stepfather.

He studied at Clifton College and Magdalene College, Cambridge. Clifton College's theatre, The Redgrave Theatre, is named after him. He was a schoolmaster at Cranleigh School in Surrey before becoming an actor in 1934. There he directed the boys in Hamlet, King Lear and The Tempest, but managed to play all the leading roles himself. The 'Redgrave Room' at the school was later named after him. In the new Guildford School of Actingbuilding which opened in January 2010, there is the Sir Michael Redgrave Studio.

Theatre career

Redgrave made his first professional appearance at the Playhouse in Liverpool on 30 August 1934 as Roy Darwin in Counsellor-at-Law (by Elmer Rice), then spent two years with its Liverpool Repertory Company where he met his future wife Rachel Kempson. They married on 18 July 1935.

Source: Wikipedia