Victoria Wood CBE (born 19 May 1953) is an English comedian, actor, singer-songwriter, screenwriter and director. Wood has written and starred in sketches, plays, films and sitcoms, and her live comedy act is interspersed with her own compositions, which she accompanies on piano. Much of her humour is grounded in everyday life, and includes references to popular British media and brand names of quintessentially British products. She is noted for her skills in observing culture, and in satirising social classes.
She started her career in 1974 by winning the ATV talent show New Faces. It wasn't until the 1980s that she began to establish herself as a comedy star, with the award-winning television series Victoria Wood As Seen On TV and became one of Britain's most popular stand-up comedians. In 1998, she wrote and starred in the (again, award-winning) sitcom Dinnerladies. In 2006, she won two BAFTA awards for her one-off drama for ITV1, Housewife, 49. Wood frequently works with long-term collaborators Julie Walters, Duncan Preston and Celia Imrie.
Read more about Victoria Wood: Awards and Recognition, Personal Life, Stand-Up Videos
Famous quotes containing the words victoria and/or wood:
“Sometimes my wife complains that she’s overwhelmed with work and just can’t take one of the kids, for example, to a piano lesson. I’ll offer to do it for her, and then she’ll say, “No, I’ll do it.” We have to negotiate how much I trespass into that mother role—it’s not given up easily.”
—Anonymous Father. As quoted in Women and Their Fathers, by Victoria Secunda, ch. 3 (1992)
“Let the palings of her bed
Be quince and box-wood overlaid
with the scented bark of yew.
That all the wood in blossoming,
May calm her heart and cool her blood
For losing of her maidenhood.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)