Jane Lapotaire - Duchess of Gloucester

Jane Lapotaire is Honorary President of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre Club,and is the President of the Friends of Shakespeare's Globe.

She played lead in Piaf at The Plymouth theatre in New York (now the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre) for which she won a Tony for Best Actress.

Janet's first appearance at the RSC was in the 1974 season in Twelfth Night, Macbeth and Uncle Vanya. Since then she has graced their stages many times including playing Gertrude in Hamlet, Queen Katherine in Henry VIII, Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost and the lead in Piaf before the show went to New York.

In the late 60's and early 70's she worked with the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic Theatre in numerous productions including Oedipus, The Way of the World, The White Devil, The Merchant of Venice and A Shorter Back To Methusalah. 

Photo: Chava Eichner

Piaf was made into a TV movie in 1974 and she has also played Lady MacBeth and Cleopatra on television. She has also appeared in many mini-series including Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story, Blind Justice, Uncle Silas, Ain't Misbehavin' and most recently He Knew He Was Right.

Click here to read her full CV.

In 2003 she wrote a book called Time Out of Mind about her recovery from suffering from a cerebral haemorrhage.

She will be playing the Duchess of Gloucester in Richard II.

"The Duchess of Gloucester is the widow of Thomas of Woodstock, the Duke of Gloucester. The Duchess tries to convince her brother-in-law, John of Gaunt, to avenge her husband's death. But Gaunt refuses, because King Richard is responsible, and Gaunt thinks it's more important for him to be loyal to the king than his own flesh and blood.  The Duchess' grief over her husband's death, along with her insistence that Gaunt find some way to get justice, really captures the mood of the kingdom. Gaunt tells the Duchess that she can't do anything except wait for God to punish Richard. Feeling hopeless and grief-stricken, later, we learn the Duchess has died." - shmoop.com

"Yet one word more: grief boundeth where it falls,
Not with the empty hollowness, but weight:
I take my leave before I have begun,
For sorrow ends not when it seemeth done."