British actress Miriam Margolyes will receive this year’s Raindance Icon Award at the Raindance Film Festival, taking place in London between June 17-26.
Margolyes will receive her accolade at the festival’s opening gala on June 17 after the U.K. premiere of Michel Parandi’s “April X.”
Raindance will give two other Icon Awards this year: to American film director and co-founder of Troma Entertainment film studio Lloyd Kaufman and a posthumous award to American rock legend Eddie Cochran. Presented to Eddie’s sister and mother, the Icon Award is set to be displayed alongside his original Gretsch guitar and his other trophies at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Cochran is the subject of the festival’s closing film, Kirsty Bell’s “Eddie Cochran: Don’t Forget Me.”
Margolyes recently starred in Lee Knight’s “A Friend of Dorothy,” which started its journey at Raindance almost exactly a year ago and went on to have a successful festival run that culminated in an Oscar nomination for Best Live Action Short Film. Knight will be the one to present the actress with her award in what the festival describes as a “full circle moment.” “A Friend of Dorothy” sees Margolyes as a widow whose quiet life is upended when a teen (played by Alistair Nwachukwu) accidentally kicks his football into her garden, the two developing a tender bond over their shared loneliness.
Speaking with Variety about being honored at Raindance, the charismatic Margolyes exclaims: “I didn’t quite believe it!”
“Everybody likes awards but, in my secret heart, I think awards are not good for people because they become smug,” she adds. “I don’t want to become smug. And there are so many brilliant performers and everybody sometimes deserves an award. So it’s my turn! I am going to accept it gratefully and hopefully gracefully.”
Asked what the word “icon” means to her, the actress playfully responded that it means “a small religious picture of some suffering saint.” “I am certainly not that, I can tell you! What I am is a very lucky old lady. They call me a national treasure. I’ve also been called with more accuracy a national trinket and I think it is a bit rude to call me a trinket because that’s something you can discard and you can’t fucking discard me! In fact, I keep expanding. I am really grateful for my life at the moment and really grateful to Raindance, bless them, for picking me out. I think I’m a worthy person, you know? I’ve worked hard all my life in the business and I try to do my best.”
“A Friend of Dorothy,” courtesy of the British Film Council
Looking back at her experience with “A Friend of Dorothy,” Margolyes says she “loves” hearing the film’s trajectory being described as a “journey.” “It is one of those words like community, a kind of word we need. We need to feel something positive is happening and that we don’t need to always be sunk in the miseries of today. There is hope at the end of the tunnel. I may be nearer the end of my journey, but I’m very happy to have had a journey and to have an award for it.”
“I loved the film, I loved the writing and that is what brought me to it,” she adds. “But the person who made it happen is Lee, this adorable young man who gave me such excellent direction. He is a brilliant director and wonderful writer. When I heard he would be presenting me with the award, I felt I should be handing it straight back to him because I wouldn’t have had that moment without him.”
Margolyes says there are currently plans to turn “A Friend of Dorothy” into a feature film. “It’s on the cards. It’s not up to me, it’s up to Lee and the producers, but I certainly want that to happen. They’ve asked me if I’m available and I said: you bet! I think it should be a feature film because this is not a story that needs to be compressed. There is room for it to expand, and it would be lovely to tell such a story.”
As for how important it is to her meeting new talent like Knight at this stage of her career, the actress says “it’s an injection of life.” “I’m 85, darling. You are not going to meet many people who are 85. Meeting young people is essential. The problem when you are old is that you tend to meet only old people. Some of them are gorgeous and some of them are frankly boring as shit. So I am just lucky that I’ve got the chance through my generous profession as an actress to meet young people. That’s what is so wonderful about being in show business. It is a broad church and we have young, old, fat, thin, gay and straight. That’s how the world should be.”
Born in Oxford, England in 1941, Margolyes is a veteran of stage and screen who has starred in major films such as “Yentl,” “Little Shop of Horrors,” “Magnolia” and as the iconic Professor Sprout in the “Harry Potter” films. She won the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress in 1993 for Martin Scorsese’s “The Age of Innocence” and the Critics Circle Awards for her role in “Little Dorrit.” Her wide-spanning career also includes work on television, radio, the stage and voice work ranging from audiobooks to voicing several TV documentaries. She has also written three acclaimed books about her life, with the fourth book, “Miriam’s Full English,” published earlier this year.
The Raindance Icon Award is the festival’s signature award, honoring and celebrating the icons of independent cinema in the U.K. and internationally: those who make an authentic and iconic impression via the medium of film.
Previous Raindance Icon Award recipients include Celia Imrie, Jason Isaacs, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Winterbottom, David Yates, Vanessa Redgrave, Jonathan Pryce, Gemma Arterton, Michael Caine, Sally Hawkins, Jude Law, Olivia Colman, Terry Gilliam, Guy Richie and Ken Loach. Posthumous Raindance Icon Awards have been presented to Joan Plowright (accepted by Tamsin Olivier, daughter of Joan Plowright and Lawrence Olivier) and Helen McCrory (accepted by Damian Lewis).
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