Jane Horrocks
| Jane Horrocks | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Barbara Jane Horrocks 18 January 1964 Rawtenstall, Lancashire, England, UK |
| Occupation | Actress, voice artist, singer |
| Years active | 1987–present |
| Television |
Absolutely Fabulous Little Princess Fifi and the Flowertots Trollied |
| Partner(s) |
Nick Vivian (1996-present) |
| Children | 2 |
Barbara Jane Horrocks (born 18 January 1964) is an English stage, film and television actress, voice artist, musician and singer, who played the roles of Bubble and Katy Grin in the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous (1992–2012). She was nominated for the 1993 Olivier Award for Best Actress for the title role in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, and received Golden Globe and BAFTA Award nominations when she reprised the role in the 1998 film Little Voice. Her other film roles include The Witches (1990), Life Is Sweet (1990), Corpse Bride (2005) and Sunshine on Leith (2013).
Early life
Horrocks, the youngest of three children, was born in Rawtenstall, Lancashire, the daughter of Barbara (née Ashworth), a hospital worker, and John Horrocks, a sales representative.[1] She attended Balladen County Primary School and later trained at Oldham College and subsequently at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art with Imogen Stubbs and Ralph Fiennes,[2] and began her career with the Royal Shakespeare Company.[3] She drew critical notice for her performance in the film Life Is Sweet (1991), followed by her award-winning performance in the West End play The Rise and Fall of Little Voice in which she sang all the songs. Horrocks became a name with the role of Bubble in Absolutely Fabulous (1992–2012).
The Rise and Fall of Little Voice
While working on Road, a play directed by Jim Cartwright, Horrocks warmed up by doing singing impressions of Judy Garland, Shirley Bassey and Ethel Merman. Cartwright was so impressed with her mimicry he wrote The Rise and Fall of Little Voice for her. She was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1992 West End production, directed by her boyfriend Sam Mendes. She reprised her role in the 1998 screen adaptation, Little Voice, which earned nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, the Satellite Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role - Motion Picture, and the British Independent Film Award for Best Actress.
In 2000, Horrocks made the CD Further Adventures of Little Voice, again singing in the style of favourite divas. The recording includes duets with Ewan McGregor, Robbie Williams and Dean Martin. Horrocks collaborated once more with Robbie Williams the following year, for a cover of the Bobby Darin song "Things" on Williams's album Swing When You're Winning.
Career
Horrocks has appeared on stage in Ask for the Moon (Hampstead, 1986), A Collier's Friday Night (Greenwich, 1987), Valued Friends (Hampstead, 1989), and The Debutante Ball (Hampstead, 1989). She appeared in Catherine Cookson's The Fifteen Streets, alongside Sean Bean and Owen Teale in 1989, Our Own Kind (Bush, 1991), Deadly Advice (Fletcher, 1993), Cabaret (Donmar Warehouse, 1994), Macbeth (Greenwich Theatre, 1995) and Absurd Person Singular (Garrick Theatre, 2007).[1] Her last West End appearance was in Sweet Panic, the 2003 Stephen Poliakoff drama in which she portrayed a neurotic mother locked in a battle of wills with her disturbed son's psychologist. She starred in Richard Jones's critically acclaimed production of The Good Soul of Szechuan at the Young Vic in 2008,[4] and was reunited with Jones in a new musical production of Annie Get Your Gun, which opened at the Young Vic in October 2009.[5]In 2016s If You Kiss Me, Kiss Me Horrocks revisited the songs of her youth, to sing versions of tracks by the likes of Joy Division, The Smiths , The Buzzcocks and The Human League at London’s Young Vic.[6]
Horrocks's voiceovers have been used on Chicken Run (2000), Christmas Carol: The Movie (2001), Corpse Bride (2005), Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (2006) and Tinker Bell (2008) (in which she was Fairy Mary; she reprises the role in the Tinker Bell sequels), and on radio as Fenchurch in the audio adaptation of Douglas Adams' science fiction series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for BBC Radio 4. She has voiced Donner in all three Robbie the Reindeer films in aid of Comic Relief.
Other television credits include Absolutely Fabulous, Victoria Wood - We'd Quite Like To Apologise, Bad Girl, Boon, Heartland, Hunting Venus, La Nonna, Leaving Home, Never Mind the Horrocks, Nightlife, Wyrd Sisters, Foxbusters, Red Dwarf, Some Kind of Life, Suffer the Little Children, The Storyteller, The Garden, Fifi & the Flowertots, Little Princess (the voice of the princess) and Welcome to the Times. She was the subject of an episode of the genealogy documentary series Who Do You Think You Are? in 2006. That year she played the title role in The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, a drama about a woman elected prime minister. For 10 years, Horrocks appeared with Prunella Scales in commercials for the UK supermarket chain Tesco.[7] She narrated BBC Two's television series The Speaker in April 2009.[8]
Also in 2009, Horrocks took the lead in the BBC TV production Gracie!, a drama portraying the life of Gracie Fields during World War II and her relationship with the Italian-born director Monty Banks (played by Tom Hollander).[9]
On Tuesday 14 January 2014, Horrocks appeared as a contestant in The Great Sport Relief Bake Off on BBC Two. This programme is the celebrity version of The Great British Bake Off, whose purpose is to help raise money for the charity Sport Relief, and was hosted by Jo Brand. The other contestants were: TV and radio presenter Kirsty Young, choreographer Jason Gardiner, and Olympic athlete Greg Rutherford.
In October 2014, Horrocks will play Ella Khan in the London revival of East is East at Trafalgar Studios as part of Jamie Lloyd's Trafalgar Transformed season.[10]
On 9 May 2015 she gave a reading at VE Day 70: A Party to Remember in Horse Guards Parade, London that was broadcast live on BBC1.[11]
In 2015 she supplied the voice of the Tubby Phone in the reboot of the popular British children's television series Teletubbies.
Personal life
Horrocks lives with playwright Nick Vivian[12] in Twickenham with their children, son Dylan and daughter Molly.[13]
In 2011, Horrocks caused minor controversy by admitting to no longer shopping in Tesco, stating that '(t)here's always a set type of people doing their shopping ... whether it's pensioners holding everyone up or screeching kids. Or sometimes you can have rather a lot of chavs in, and that gets a bit scary.' Writers Julie Burchill and Barbara Allen branded Horrocks snobbish and hypocritical for her comments, drawing particular attention to the fact that Horrocks had famously fronted a series of adverts for the supermarket chain in the 1990s.[14][15][16]
Filmography
Film
| Year | Title | Role | Directed by |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1988 | The Dressmaker | Rita | Jim O'Brien |
| 1989 | Getting It Right | Jenny | Randal Kleiser |
| The Wolves of Willoughby Chase | Pattern | Stuart Orme | |
| 1990 | The Witches | Miss Susan Irvine | Nicolas Roeg |
| Memphis Belle | Faith | Michael Caton-Jones | |
| Life Is Sweet | Nicola | Mike Leigh | |
| 1993 | Second Best | Debbie | Chris Menges |
| 1994 | Deadly Advice | Jodie Greenwood | Mandie Fletcher |
| 1997 | Bring Me the Head of Mavis Davis | Mavis Davis / Marla Dorland | John Henderson |
| 1998 | Little Voice | LV | Mark Herman |
| 1999 | Faeries | Huccaby (voice) | Gary Hurst |
| 1999 | Hooves of Fire | Donner (voice) | |
| 2000 | Chicken Run | Babs (voice) | Peter Lord & Nick Park |
| Born Romantic | Mo | David Kane | |
| Lion of Oz | Wimsik (voice) | Tim Deacon | |
| 2001 | Christmas Carol: The Movie | Ghost of Christmas Past (voice) | Jimmy T. Murakami |
| 2002 | Legend of the Lost Tribe | Donner (voice) | |
| 2005 | Corpse Bride | The Black Widow / Mrs. Plum (voice) | Tim Burton |
| Brothers of the Head | Roberta Howe | Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe | |
| 2006 | Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties | Meenie (voice) | Tim Hill |
| 2007 | Close Encounters of the Herd Kind | Donner (voice) | |
| 2008 | Tinker Bell | Fairy Mary (voice) | Bradley Raymond |
| 2009 | Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure | Fairy Mary (voice) | Klay Hall |
| 2010 | No One Gets Off in This Town | ||
| 2011 | Arthur Christmas | Lead Elf (voice) | Sarah Smith |
| 2012 | Secret of the Wings | Fairy Mary (voice) | Bobs Gannaway & Peggy Holmes |
| 2013 | Sunshine on Leith | Jean | Dexter Fletcher |
| 2014 | The Pirate Fairy | Fairy Mary | Peggy Holmes |
| 2016 | Ab Fab: The Movie | ||
Television
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1987 | First Sight | Natalie | Episode: "Leaving Home" (1.3) |
| Screenplay | Louise | Episode: "The Road" (2.13) | |
| 1988 | The Storyteller | Anja | Episode: "The True Bride" (1.9) |
| The Ruth Rendell Mysteries | Pippa Bond | Episode: "No Crying He Makes" (2.7) | |
| 1989 | The Jim Henson Hour | Anja | Episode: "Musicians" (1.8) |
| Victoria Wood | Cathy Warburton | Episode: "We'd Quite Like to Apologise" (1.4) | |
| Smith & Jones | Episode: "The Unprepared Version" (5.6) | ||
| 1990 | Boon | Trisha Downey | Episode: "Best Left Buried" (5.11) |
| 1991 | Screen One | Gail | Episode: "Alive and Kicking" (3.7) |
| Performance | Episode: "Nona" (1.2) | ||
| 1992 | Red Dwarf | Nirvanah Crane | Episode: "Holoship" (5.1) |
| Screenplay | Maggie Hunt | Episode: "Bad Girl" (7.3) | |
| Performance | Episode: "Roots" (2.3) | ||
| 1995 | Performance | Doll Tearsheet | Episode: "Henry IV" (5.5) |
| 1996 | Tales from the Crypt | Cammy | Episode: "Cold War" (7.6) |
| Never Mind the Horrocks | Various roles | ||
| 1997 | Wyrd Sisters | Magrat Garlick (voice) | Television mini-series |
| The Blobs | Various (voice) | 26 Episodes (all episodes) | |
| 1995–1998 | Crapston Villas | Flossie | 20 episodes (all episodes) |
| 1999 | Foxbusters | Jeffries (voice) | |
| 1999–2000 | Watership Down | Hannah | 14 episodes |
| 2000 | Mirrorball | Yitta Hilberstam | Television pilot |
| 2001 | Little Big Mouth | Krystan (voice) | |
| 2002 | Linda Green | Teresa Franklin | Episode: "Teresa" (2.2) |
| 2003–2004 | Wide-Eye | Flea (voice) | 52 episodes |
| 2004 | Monkey Trousers | Various roles | |
| 2005 | Jericho | Sadie Swettenham | Episode: "To Murder and Create" (1.3) |
| 2006 | The Street | Angela Quinn | Episodes: "The Accident" (1.1) "Stan" (1.2) |
| 2005–2005 | Fifi and the Flowertots | Fifi Forget-Me-Not (voice) | 40 episodes |
| 2006 | The Amazing Mrs Pritchard | Ros Pritchard | 6 episodes (all episodes) |
| 2006–2007 | Little Princess | Little Princess (voice) | |
| 2011 | Coming Up | Felicity | Episode: "Magic" (6.5) |
| Phineas and Ferb | Eliza | Episode: "My Fair Goalie" (3.11) | |
| This is Jinsy | Mrs. Stenton | Episode: "Vel" (1.6) | |
| Little Crackers | Hairdresser | Episode: "Jane Horrocks' Little Cracker: Barbara" (2.3) | |
| Pixie Hollow Games | Fairy Mary (voice) | Television special | |
| 2012 | Get Your House in Order | Narrator (voice) | Episode: "Stuart" (1.3) |
| True Love | Sandra | Episode: "Sandra" (1.4) | |
| 1992–2012 | Absolutely Fabulous | Bubble (also played Katy Grin, Lola and radio voice) |
33 episodes |
| 2011–2013, 2015 | Trollied | Julie Cook | 35 episodes |
| 2014 | Lily's Driftwood Bay | Wee Rabbit | (filming) |
| 2015 | Inside No. 9 | Liz | "Cold Comfort" (2.4) |
| 2015 | Teletubbies | Tubby Phone (voice) |
Television films
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1989 | The Fifteen Streets | Christine Bracken | |
| Heartland | Pam | ||
| 1991 | Came Out, It Rained, Went Back in Again | Learner Lesbian | |
| 1993 | Cabaret | Sally Bowles | |
| 1994 | Self Catering | Marilyn | |
| Suffer the Little Children | Deborah Hayes | ||
| 1995 | Some Kind of Life | Alison | |
| 1996 | Nightlife | Helen | |
| 1999 | Hunting Venus | Cassandra | |
| The Flint Street Nativity | Zoe | ||
| 2009 | Gracie! | Gracie Fields | |
| 2010 | The Road to Coronation Street | Margaret Morris |
Short film, television and video
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1994 | Butter | Begger | Television |
| 1995 | Combination Skin | (voice) | Short film |
| 1999 | Hooves of Fire | Donner (voice) | Television |
| 2002 | Legend of the Lost Tribe | Donner / Arctic Fox (voice) | Television |
| 2002 | Last Rumba in Rochdale | Gran (voice) | Short film |
| 2004 | Wheeling Dealing | Authentic Newsreader | Short film |
| 2006 | Voices from the Underworld | Herself (voice) | Video Short |
| 2007 | Robbie the Reindeer in Close Encounters of the Herd Kind | Donner (voice) | Television |
| 2011 | The Itch of the Golden Nit | (voice) | Short film |
Awards and honours
- BAFTA Awards (1999): Nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for Little Voice (1998)
- British Independent Film Awards (1999): Nomination for Best Actress for Little Voice (1998)
- Chicago Film Critics Association Awards (1999): Nomination for Best Actress for Little Voice (1998)
- Golden Globes (1999): Nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture -Comedy/Musical, for Little Voice (1998)
- Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards (1991): Won Award for Best Supporting Actress for Life is Sweet (1991)
- National Society of Film Critics Awards (1992): Won Award for Best Supporting Actress for Life Is Sweet
- Satellite Awards (1999): Nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical for Little Voice (1998)
- Screen Actors Guild Awards (1999): Nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Cast, for Little Voice (1998), shared with Annette Badland, Brenda Blethyn, Jim Broadbent, Michael Caine, Philip Jackson and Ewan McGregor.
- Screen Actors Guild Awards (1999): Nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role for Little Voice (1998)
- Sitges - Catalonian International Film Festival (1994): Won Best Actress Award for Deadly Advice (1994)
References
- 1 2 Bio at FilmReference.com
- ↑ Jane Horrocks at The Guardian Unlimited Film
- ↑ "BBC - Drama - People Index Jane Horrocks".
- ↑ Theatre review at The Guardian Unlimited
- ↑ Official Young Vic announcement
- ↑ bellaafrica, why jane horrocks is singing the smiths
- ↑ Jones, Paul. "Jane Horrocks: "I’m eternally grateful to Tesco"". Radio Times. BBC. Retrieved 17 September 2013.
- ↑ "Filmography: Horrocks, Jane". Film & TV Database. BFI. Retrieved 17 September 2013.
- ↑ "Amazing Gracie: Jane Horrocks". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 17 September 2013.
- ↑ "East is East starring Jane Horrocks".
- ↑ "Actress Jane Horrocks cries reading WW2 letter". BBC News.
- ↑ "What I know about men". The Guardian. 27 September 2009. Retrieved 4 August 2012.
- ↑ "Cape escape: From white sand beaches to wines and wildebeest, South Africa has it all". Daily Mail. 22 April 2012. Retrieved 4 August 2012.
- ↑ "Jane Horrocks doesn't like Tesco... despite starring in supermarket's adverts - Daily Mail Online". Mail Online. 26 July 2011.
- ↑ "Julie Burchill: It's time to tackle the chav-baiters". The Independent. 28 July 2011.
- ↑ Barbara Ellen. "Sorry, Jane Horrocks, but it's you who's being common". the Guardian.
External links
- Jane Horrocks at the Internet Movie Database
- BBC interview
- Jane Horrocks on BBC Drama Faces
- The many faces of Jane Horrocks
- Jane Horrocks on Who Do You Think You Are?
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