Biography

Lesley Manville was born on March 12, 1956 in Brighton, East Sussex, England. She is a multi award-winning actress of theatre, film, and television, and has worked extensively with director Mike Leigh. She is known for Another Year (2010), All or Nothing (2002), Topsy-Turvy (1999) and Secrets & Lies (1996), and her performance in Phantom Thread (2017), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She also had a supporting role in the Disney fantasy Maleficent (2014). Manville's extensive stage career includes roles in "As You Like It", "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" and "The Alchemist". Her film debut was in Dance with a Stranger (1985). She was awarded Officer of the Order of the British Empire at the 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to drama. She was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire at the 2021 Queen's New Years Honours for her services to drama and to charity.
- IMDb mini biography by: Lesley Manville and Pedro Borges

Often works with director Mike Leigh

[on having portrayed the mother of Matt Smith, James Corden and Colin Morgan]: All those boys have done rather well since they worked with me as their mother. They owe me big time. They're all wealthier than me - they can have a whip round.

[on Maleficent (2014)]: It's a massive epic Disney film based on Sleeping Beauty starring Angelina Jolie in the title role. Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple and myself play the three pixies. They are hilarious. It was just the most happy, happy time. Some of the time in the film we're life-sized, but for the rest of it we're little ditty pixies. It was done by motion capture, so we spent three weeks of filming flying around Pinewood studios, with the Cirque du Soleil people strapping us in and tumbling us in the air. It was just fantastic. It's going to come out this Summer and there's going to be a doll of me that you'll be able to buy at the Disney shop! It's amazing that Imelda and I go from epic Mike Leigh plays and films to being pixie Disney dolls!

[on David Schwimmer, her co-star of the play "Some Girls"] It's lovely. He's not at all starry. He doesn't take a solo curtain call. He likes to take his gloves off and get his hands dirty. He's a very committed, hard-working theatre actor so we're just like working any other group of actors in that way. Of course, that's not necessarily how other people see it. A friend of mine rang the box office to collect a ticket I'd reserved for her and the girl said, "who's Lesley Manville?"

I don't think of myself as old. I feel at the top of my form as an actor and a woman: free, liberated, energised. I want this feeling to stay - I'd quite like to lock it - because I know I'm not what you'd call young but don't feel I'm what you would call old.

I work with people much younger than me who sometimes don't turn up prepared and I find that aggravating and inexcusable. And then in the next sentence, they'll say: "I hope when I'm your age, I have your career," and I feel like saying: "Well, buck up and get your act together a bit more."