Glenda Jackson, a charismatic actress whom I’d watched in many films beginning with Peter Brook’s Marat / Sade, was posing for me, and yet not posing. I felt that for her acting was only one aspect of her personality, and that fame, Oscars, multiple awards was something she simply took in her stride.
Perhaps that is why I asked her to lean with her back against a mirror, such a quintessential part of a theatre dressing room. The composition of this portrait is governed purely by Glenda Jackson’s psyche.