Marianne Faithfull - Acting Career

Acting Career

In addition to her music career, Faithfull has had a career as an actress in theatre, television and film.

Her first professional theatre appearance was in a 1967 stage adaptation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in which she played Irina, co-starring with Glenda Jackson and Avril Elgar. Before that she played herself in Jean-Luc Godard's film Made in U.S.A.. Faithfull has also appeared in the 1967 film I'll Never Forget What's'isname alongside Orson Welles (where she notedly became the first person to say "fuck" in a mainstream studio picture), in the French television film Anna, starring Anna Karina (in which Faithfull sang Serge Gainsbourg's "Hier ou Demain"), as a leather-clad motorcyclist in the 1968 French film La Motocyclette (English titles: Girl on a Motorcycle and Naked Under Leather) opposite Alain Delon, and in Kenneth Anger's 1969 film Lucifer Rising, in which she played Lilith. In 1969, Faithfull played Ophelia opposite Nicol Williamson's title character in Hamlet, directed by Tony Richardson and featuring Anthony Hopkins as Claudius. The original producers of The Rocky Horror Show wanted her to the part of "Magenta/Usherette", but as Patricia Quinn (who got the part) stated in an interview "She went to India with her guru".

Her stage work also included Edward Bond's Early Morning at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in which she played a lesbian Florence Nightingale, The Collector at St Martin's Theatre in the West End opposite Simon Williams, Mad Dog at Hampstead Theatre opposite Denholm Elliott, A Patriot for Me by John Osborne, at the Palace Theatre, Watford and the role of Lizzie Curry in N. Richard Nash's The Rainmaker, which toured the UK and in which Faithfull's co-star was Peter Gilmore. Other film roles in the 1970s included Sophy Kwykwer in Stephen Weeks's Ghost Story (AKA Madhouse Mansion), released on a newly mastered DVD in the UK in 2009, and Helen Rochefort in Assault on Agathon.

Her television acting in the late 1960s and early 1970s included The Door of Opportunity (1970) with Ian Ogilvy, adapted from W. Somerset Maugham's story, followed by August Strindberg's The Stronger (1971) with Britt Ekland, and Terrible Jim Fitch (1971) by James Leo Herlihy, which once more paired Faithfull with Nicol Williamson.

In 1993, she played the role of Pirate Jenny in The Threepenny Opera at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. Later she performed Kurt Weill's "The Seven Deadly Sins" with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, a CD of which was released in 1998.

She has played both God and the Devil. She appeared as God in two guest appearances in the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous opposite friend Jennifer Saunders, with another close friend, Anita Pallenberg, playing the Devil. In 2004 and 2005, she played the Devil in William Burroughs' and Tom Waits' musical, The Black Rider, directed by Robert Wilson, which opened at London's Barbican Theatre, toured to San Francisco, but from which she was forced to withdraw prior to performances at the Sydney Festival, owing to exhaustion.

In 2001 Faithfull appeared with Lucy Russell and Lambert Wilson in C.S. Leigh's Far From China. She has also appeared in Patrice Chéreau's Intimacy (2001) and, in 2004, in Jose Hayot's Nord-Plage. Faithfull appeared as Empress Maria Theresa in Sofia Coppola's 2006 biopic, Marie Antoinette. She starred in the film Irina Palm, released at the Berlinale film festival in 2007. Faithfull plays the central role of Maggie, a 60-year-old widow who becomes a sex worker to pay for medical treatment for her ill grandson.

Faithfull lent her voice to the 2008 film Evil Calls: The Raven, although this was recorded several years earlier when the project was still titled Alone in the Dark. She has appeared in the 2008 feature documentary by Nik Sheehan on Brion Gysin and the dreamachine, entitled FLicKeR.

In 2008, Faithfull toured readings of Shakespeare's sonnets, drawing on the "Dark Lady" sequence. Her accompanist was the cellist Vincent Ségal.

In 2011 and 2012 Faithfull had supporting roles in the films Faces in the Crowd and Belle du Seigneur.