Suzanna Hamilton
Suzanna Hamilton is a British actress born in 1960 in London. She is most famous for her role as Julia in the film adaptation of George Orwell's classic novel, Nineteen Eighty-four.
She is often cast as beguiling, enigmatic characters, who tend to combine an appearance of childlike tenderness and vulnerability with a hint of provocative sexuality. Her mysterious, dark-haired looks and sensual poise are faintly reminiscent of early Harriet Andersson, while her very English gamine beauty is comparable to a young Rita Tushingham. In the 1985 film Wetherby, Hamilton's elusive character is memorably described as "the kind of girl people become obsessed with".
Early Career
Suzanna Hamilton was discovered by filmmaker, Claude Whatham, at age 12 in a children's experimental theater in north London in the early 1970s. She starred in her first feature, based on the popular Arthur Ransome children's book, Swallows and Amazons, in 1974. Billed as Zanna Hamilton, she played the role of Susan Walker, one of four young siblings collectively known as "the Swallows", who go on a boating excursion in the Lake District during the summer of 1929. Whatham also directed her as Princess Alexandra in the BBC miniseries, Disraeli (1978), which was later broadcast to North American audiences as a featured program on Masterpiece Theater in 1980.
Suzanna Hamilton received her acting training at the Anna Scher Theatre School and the Centre School of Speech and Drama in London.
For her first major screen role, she played Izz Huett, the lovesick Dorset dairymaid, in Roman Polanski's 1979 film, Tess, based on the classic Thomas Hardy novel, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and starring Nastassja Kinski in the title role.
Her next significant role was in Richard Loncraine's 1982 film, Brimstone and Treacle, based on Dennis Potter's play of the same name. In this film, Hamilton starred as Pattie Bates, the traumatized, catatonic daughter of a devoutly religious, middle-aged Home Counties couple (Denholm Elliott and Joan Plowright) whose lives are changed by a demonic drifter and con man played by Sting. She was also featured in the BBC television mystery, A Pattern of Roses, with a young Helena Bonham Carter, in 1983.
Nineteen Eighty-four (1984)
Suzanna Hamilton's next major screen appearance stands as her most well-known and accomplished film performance. In 1984 (AKA Nineteen Eighty-four), she was perfectly cast as Julia opposite John Hurt's Winston Smith in writer/director Michael Radford's film of George Orwell's classic dystopian novel. Her uncommonly bold, affecting and physically revealing performance garnered critical praise, particularly from Vincent Canby in The New York Times. But her excellent work was largely overshadowed by the death of her legendary castmate, Richard Burton, who delivered his final screen performance as O'Brien, as well as the post-release controversy regarding the film's soundtrack.
Her unabashed and casual manner while playing scenes completely nude for two thirds of her screen time in Nineteen Eighty-four earned the 23-year-old actress some notoriety as well as a bit of a minor cult following over the years as the film's reputation has grown. The prominence of her pubic hair in many scenes also created a stir when the film was shown at the first annual Tokyo International Film Festival, as the display of the female pubis is considered taboo in Japan and its image is usually censored for Japanese audiences.
Film appearances in the 1980s
Nineteen eighty-five proved to be a very active year for Suzanna Hamilton. She starred in British playwright David Hare's film, Wetherby, opposite Vanessa Redgrave. In this film, Hamilton's character, Karen Creasy, is the sullen former friend of a young man who committed suicide, and she represents the emotional void at the heart of contemporary British life with all its repressions, denials, and disaffection -- "a central disfiguring blankness" as one character calls it.
Her next role was as the shy equestrienne, Felicity, in Sydney Pollack's Oscar-winning Out of Africa, based on the memoirs of the famed Danish writer, Isak Dinesen. In one charming exchange, she steals a scene from the film's star, Meryl Streep.
In the 1987 German film, Devil's Paradise, which was shot in Thailand and based on a Joseph Conrad story, Hamilton was cast opposite Jürgen Prochnow as a saxophonist in an all-woman band touring colonial dives in southeast Asia. In 1988, she starred in another low-budget German film, a short called The Voice, opposite the British cult actor, Jon Finch.
After this point, Suzanna Hamilton's major film career was effectively over. In the October 1988 issue of Elle magazine, in a piece devoted to the fashion secrets of the current crop of British beauties, it was indicated that she felt all of her ambitions had been realized by age 28. Her subsequent screen roles were mostly in obscure European films made in exotic locations as well as numerous British television dramas.
Television appearances and the 1990s
In 1986, Suzanna Hamilton starred opposite Peter MacNichol as a Cockney bride living with a 1940s Pennsylvania coal-mining family in the well-received television drama, Johnny Bull, which featured supporting performances from Jason Robards, Colleen Dewhurst, and Kathy Bates. The following year, she played the winsome Anglo-French spy, Matty Firman, in Wish Me Luck, a British World War II miniseries, and also starred in the miniseries based on Barbara Taylor Bradford's melodrama, Hold the Dream.
She made a striking appearance as the inscrutable femme fatale, Anna Raven, in the 1989 BBC miniseries Never Come Back, a murky, noirish conspiracy thriller based on the celebrated 1941 novel by John Mair, which takes place on the eve of the London Blitz during the so-called "Phony War" of 1939-40. Hamilton also turned in an admirable performance in the excellent 1990 British television film, Small Zones, as a strong-willed Russian poetess whose subversive writings have led to her indefinite imprisonment in a bleak Soviet holding cell. She had a supporting role in a 1992 TV film of Barbara Cartland's Regency-period bodice-ripper, Duel of Hearts.
Her next film role came with 1992's low-budget Gothic horror romance, Tale of a Vampire. Written and directed by a 27-year-old Japanese-British film student, Shimako Sato, Hamilton made a dual appearance: first as Ann, a mousy librarian in present-day London grieving the untimely death of her boyfriend, as well as Ann's 19th-century Doppelgänger, Virginia Clemm, the real-life wife of Edgar Allan Poe -- the latter whom is also, coincidentally (according to the film's fanciful literary premise), the long-lost mistress of a lonely, melancholic, centuries-old vampire played by Julian Sands.
In the early 1990s, she had a recurring role as Dr. Karen Goodliffe on the British TV hospital drama series, Casualty. When the actress became pregnant in early 1993, her character had to be written out of the show. Her last film of note was 1997's Island on Bird Street, a Danish period drama made in the Dogme 95 style, concerning an orphaned Jewish boy who dodges the Nazis in occupied Europe during World War II. In this film, Hamilton had a brief cameo as the mother of a girl whom the boy befriends.
Theater Career
Suzanna Hamilton is also an accomplished theater and radio actress. She made her first West End appearance on the London stage in 1982, as part of the original cast production of Tom Stoppard's play, The Real Thing. In 1993, she played the lead as a Welsh maid who gets in over her head in the Bush Theater production of Lucinda Coxon's Waiting at the Water's Edge; in 2002, she was cast as Creusa in a Gate Theater production of Euripides' Ion; and in early 2005, she appeared as Dora, a tough, bereaved, guilt-ridden lesbian incarcerated in a 1920s asylum in the Salisbury Playhouse production of Charlotte Jones' chamber drama, Airswimming. She also lent her voice to a 1991 audio-book recording of Julian Barnes' novel about a love triangle called Talking It Over, playing the role of Gillian.
Current Activities
Suzanna Hamilton has since retired from acting in major motion pictures to raise her son, Lowell, who was born in October 1993. However, she still makes the occasional television appearance and continues to do theater and voice work. She is said to have a partner named Steve and practices the Alexander Technique for relaxation and posture. She also enjoys the English countryside and has traveled extensively.
Distinguishing features: freckles and slight discoloration on right side of lower lip (possibly a scar or birthmark).
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