Enter the legendary actress in her latest role: running for the House of Commons. It is a part Jackson, 55, believes she must play to overturn the legacy of former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. "We've never in our contemporary history had children sleeping on the streets in cardboard boxes and plastic bags," she says. "I don't recognize my country. I don't recognize it morally."
Jackson's battleground is the decidedly affluent Hampstead and Highgate sections of London. The family of the Sultan of Brunei, the richest man in the world, has a $7.3 million home here; and the district is dotted with mansions and swimming pools. While possessing its share of immigrants, the area exudes an intellectual air, owing to the resident "champagne socialists," whom Jackson depends on for her support. Novelist Kingsley Amis and director Jonathan Miller live here, as does the editor of The Times of London. Though Members of Parliament do not have to reside in the districts they represent (Jackson herself lives with her son, Daniel, in a four-story Victorian home in the Blackheath section of southeast London, 15 miles away), the issues can be quite local. Observes one resident, chorister Boy George: "Glenda Jackson has said nothing about the parking scheme. I shall definitely not be giving her my vote."
His vote could be crucial. In Hampstead and Highgate, the election's outcome may be decided by as few as 50 votes. And with the April 9 polling date drawing close, the campaign rhetoric is becoming sharper-edged. Jackson's Conservative rival, Oliver Letwin, 35, concedes that "her speeches are better" than his. But, the merchant banker adds, "one senses she's not aware of it as something other than a play." Jackson, who has called Letwin's candidacy the result of "sheer stupidity," bristles at the charge. "People are doubly patronizing to actresses because we are women and because they think acting isn't work."
Still, she is quick to distinguish herself from other actor-activists—Vanessa Redgrave, for one. "Her extreme form of socialist politics would not be mine," Jackson says. "I'm center-left. And in some ways center-right." But she is not patterning herself after Ronald Reagan. "Oh, for God's sake!" she snaps. "I deeply resent the idea that he's an actor." Reagan is, as well, much too much the ideological soul mate of Thatcher, Jackson's bête noire.
With her father, Harry, a bricklayer, and her mother, Joan, a barmaid and a shop assistant, Jackson was born into the working class that forms the backbone of the Labour Party. Son Daniel, 23 (by former husband Roy Hodges, a theater director), is just as committed to Labour—and to his mother's campaign. On the night of Feb. 21, Daniel reportedly stood up for two black men who were being taunted by whites in a south London pub. A broken beer glass was shoved in his face, and he lost his left eye. "It is every parent's nightmare that something like this could happen," said Jackson. "It came as a terrible shock, but now I am just grateful he is alive." Two weeks after the incident, Daniel was back at his mother's side, saying, "I'll be out to help Mum as much as I can. I'm very proud of her."
If elected, Jackson will set her acting career on hold. "You can't do both," she says. "You can't be a part-time MP [Member of Parliament] and a part-time actress." Meanwhile, some of her partisans predict she may become as formidable as Thatcher—a notion she dismisses. Jackson's ex-husband once said that if the actress went into crime, she would become Jack the Ripper and that if she went into politics, she would become Prime Minister. "I thought it was funny then," she says. "I think it's funny now. But I have no ambition to fulfill either of those prophecies."
FRED HAUPTFUHRER and LAURA SANDERSON HEALY in London
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
