A short, heavy-set British character actress, Margolyes has performed primarily on the stage and radio, generally in eccentric comedy roles often requiring her to play older than her years. After studies at Cambridge, she began acting in radio with the BBC. Over the next decade Margolyes' ripe delivery could be heard everywhere in radio spots and TV commercial voiceovers, including a stint as a seductive rabbit plugging Cadbury's Carmel Bunny candy and as a charwoman chimp for a tea ad. Margolyes did not act regularly in film until the mid-1970s, and for a time most of her roles were in little-seen British films including "The Battle of Billy's Pond" (1976), "On a Paving Stone Mounted" (1978) and the experimental "Crystal Gazing" (1982), or small parts in the US-made "Yentl" (1983) and "Little Shop of Horrors" (1986). She gained critical and public attention with her performance as flirtatious spinster Flora Finching in the two-part film adaptation of Charles Dickens' "Little Dorrit" (1988). She followed with an amusing turn as Kevin Kline's outraged mother in the black comedy "I Love You to Death" (1990), a highly successful one-woman touring show, "Woomen, Lovely Woomen" (1991), spotlighting Dickensian females, and a failed sitcom, "Frannie's Turn" (1992). Margolyes received her greatest popular acclaim (under heavy padding) as the elderly, sharp-tongued Mrs. Mingott, the primary source of comic relief in "The Age of Innocence" (1993).
The widely expected Oscar nomination for Margolyes' work as Mrs. Mingott surprisingly did not appear, but the actress continued in prominent roles in ambitious films like "Immortal Beloved" (1994). She also extended her stream of oddball efforts with "Ed and His Dead Mother" (1993), as the deceased titular parent, wielding a chainsaw and eating bugs with her customary glee. Voiceover work kept her busy as well, her most popular effort in this vein being Fly, the maternal but pragmatic dog who learns about not compromising one's dreams from a pig named "Babe" (1995). She returned for the sequel, "Babe: Pig in the City" (1998) and also lent her voice tp the Matchmaker of "Mulan" (1998). Margolyes continued to work frequently, appearing in mainstream films such as "Magnolia" (1999) and "End of Days" (1999), but it was in 2002 that she nabbed the role that would make her a star, at least among juvenile moviegoers: Professor Sprout, the delightful proponent of mandrake in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets." The actress continued to work in a variety of projects, most notably playing one of the circle surrounding the aging theater diva (Annette Bening) in "Being Julia" (2004) and actor Peter Sellers' frighteningly ambitious mother in the HBO biopic "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers" (2004).
Profession(s):
Actor, voice actor
Sometimes Credited As:
BAFTA Award Best Supporting Actress "The Age of Innocence" 1993
2006 Cast in the Australian-produced computer-animated film, "Happy Feet"
2005 Cast in "Modigliani," a story of Amedeo Modigliani's bitter rivalry with Pablo Picasso
2004 Co-starred as Peg Sellers in "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers" with Geoffrey Rush and Charlize Theron
2004 Cast in "Being Julia," based on the novel "Theatre," by W. Somerset Maugham
2002 Played Professor Sprout in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets"
2001 Appeared in the London staging of "The Vagina Monologues"
2000 Co-starred with Stacy Keach and Jeffrey Jones in the L.A. premiere of "Another Time"
1999 Returned to the London stage to star as Ranyevskaya in "The Cherry Orchard"
1999 Cast as the original matriarch of a Hungarian-Jewish family in Istvan Szabo's "Sunshine"
1998 Reprised Fly for the sequel "Babe: Pig in the City"
1996 Played the Nurse in Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation of "William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet"
1996 Was one of the voices on the soundtrack for the award-winning documentary "The Long Way Home"
1995 Provided the voice of Fly, the sheepdog who serves as surrogate mother to the title piglet in the Oscar-nominated "Babe"
1993 First starring role onstage in a major play, as Mrs. Hardcastle in Sir Peter Hall's staging of Oliver Goldsmith's classic 18th century Restoration farce, "She Stoops to Conquer"
1992 American TV series debut: starred in the title role of Frannie Escobar in the short-lived CBS sitcom, "Frannie's Turn"
1991 Starred in the one-woman show, "Woomen, Lovely Woomen", onstage in London's West End; played a variety of female characters from the works of Charles Dickens; later took the show on tour international
1987 First major appearance on US TV, in a three-part adaptation of "The Little Princess", which aired on PBS
1980 Made first American films, "The Apple" and "The Awakening"
1969 Made feature film debut in a small role in "A Nice Girl Like Me"
1963 Got a job after graduating from college with the BBC's radio repertory company (date approximate)
Raised in Oxford, England
Appeared in a long-running series of commercial in England for British Telecom
Found second career recording books on tape