Life and Career
Root was born in Chelmsford, Essex. She began her career at the Leeds Playhouse in 1983 when she played Essie in Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple.
"She was a remarkably complete actress even in her early twenties, when physically she looked little more than a child. With her dark soulful eyes she could command a stage, and the Royal Shakespeare Company saw her talent very early on."
She worked regularly with the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon and London from 1983 to 1991, including playing the role of Juliet to Daniel Day-Lewis's Romeo; a very young Lady Macbeth; Cressida to Ralph Fiennes' Troilus, and Rosaline to his Berowne.
In 1995, she starred as Anne Elliot in Persuasion, co-starring Ciarán Hinds and John Woodvine. The film (made for TV, then released theatrically) was based on the novel by Jane Austen and provided Amanda Root with her first leading role in a film.
She won rave reviews in October 2008 for her portrayal of the control freak Sarah in The Old Vic's revival of Alan Ayckbourn's interlinked trilogy The Norman Conquests, directed in the round by Matthew Warchus.
Read more about this topic: Amanda Root
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“Thus when I come to shape here at this table between my hands the story of my life and set it before you as a complete thing, I have to recall things gone far, gone deep, sunk into this life or that and become part of it; dreams, too, things surrounding me, and the inmates, those old half-articulate ghosts who keep up their hauntings by day and night ... shadows of people one might have been; unborn selves.”
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