This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross. Today we're going to remember Glenda Jackson, who died June 15th at the age of 87.

Jackson had two careers. She was an Oscar-winning actress who left acting to become a member of British Parliament, where she served for 23 years.

She was elected in 1992 and stepped down in 2015. We're going to listen back to the interview I recorded with her in 2019,

after she'd returned to acting and was starring on Broadway in her production of King Lear as King Lear.

She had already played Lear in a London production that opened in 2016 at the Old Vic.

In 2018, she won a Tony for her performance in the Edward Albee play, Three Tall Women.

Before serving in Parliament, she won Oscars for her performances in the 1969 movie Women in Love, and the 1973 romantic comedy A Touch of Class.

She also starred in the 1971 movie Sunday Bloody Sunday. She won two Emmys playing Queen Elizabeth I in the 1971 BBC series, Elizabeth R, which was shown in the US as part of Masterpiece Theatre.

When I spoke with her, we started with a clip from the Broadway production of King Lear. Lear has decided that he's old, and it's time to unburden himself of his responsibilities as King, and divide his kingdom among his three daughters.

No, we have divided in three our kingdom, and it is our first attempt to shake all cares and business from our age, conferring them on younger strengths, while we unburdened, crawled toward death.

Glenda Jackson, welcome to Fresh Air.

Thank you.

The first thing people always seem to want to know is why is a woman playing King Lear, and what's it like to be a woman playing Lear?

So you first played him in 2016 at the Old Vic in London. Why did you want to play Lear?

Who would refuse the opportunity to work in a play of that stature? I mean, it is such an extraordinary play. Like all the Shakespeare, essentially he only asks us three questions.

Who are we? What are we? Why are we? And this particular play, it's just astonishing. Human nature is immutable, and so in a sense it is the most contemporary play around at the minute.

We in England had been engaged in kind of gender-bender war, really, and the marvellous company that was created and succeeded in winning those battles, they did all of Shakespeare's histories with all women castes.

So in a sense that battle was over, and what was really interesting, one of the really interesting things for me playing it, was that nobody ever mentioned the fact that I was a woman playing a man having seen the play.

And also the other interesting thing I found in doing it when I was a member of Parliament, part of my duties, was to visit old people's homes, day centers, things of that nature.

And as we get older, those absolute barriers that define gender begin to crack, they begin to get a little bit foggy and break up, and if you think about it, I mean when we're born, we teach babies, don't we, we boys or girls.

As we get older, we begin to explore, I think, rather than more the alternatives to our defined gender, and that certainly for Lear is quite useful.

I want you to elaborate a little bit on how you see gender boundaries blurring or falling away with age, and to apply it to your own life as well if you find it applicable.

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