Suzanna Hamilton

Suzanna Hamilton (born 12 September 1960) is an English actress, notable for playing the role of Julia in the 1984 film adaptation of George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, as well as other film roles including Tess, Brimstone and Treacle (1982), Wetherby (1985), and Out of Africa (1985). She has had numerous television roles such as the ITV drama Wish Me Luck (1988), the BBC medical drama Casualty (1993–94), and the STV drama McCallum (1995–97).

Life and career

Hamilton was born in London on September 12, 1960. In 1973, Hamilton received acting training at the Anna Scher Theatre School in Islington. She was a student at the Central School of Speech and Drama in Swiss Cottage, Camden. She became a protégée of filmmaker Claude Whatham, who discovered her in a children's experimental theatre in north London in the early 1970s.

In 1974, she appeared in her first feature film, the Whatham-directed Swallows and Amazons. Billed as Zanna Hamilton, she was cast as Susan Walker, one of four young siblings collectively known as "the Swallows", who go on a camping and sailing holiday in the Lake District during the summer of 1929. Whatham later directed Hamilton as Princess Alice in the BBC miniseries, Disraeli (1978). She also appeared as one of the boarding school girls who organise a strike against the Ministry of Education in The Wildcats of St. Trinian's (1980). Hamilton starred as Patricia Bates, the traumatised, catatonic daughter of a devoutly religious, middle aged Home Counties couple (Denholm Elliott and Joan Plowright) whose lives are changed by a demonic drifter and con man who calls himself Martin Taylor, played by Sting. The following year, Hamilton was featured in BBC-TV's paranormal mystery, A Pattern of Roses, with Helena Bonham Carter.

Hamilton was cast as Julia opposite John Hurt as Winston Smith in the Michael Radford film Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), based on George Orwell's dystopian novel. She obtained the role through the casting agency of the Anna Scher Theatre School. She was one of the school's earliest alumni, and the theatre is acknowledged in the film's closing credits. This performance raised her profile as a film actress and attracted critical praise, particularly from Vincent Canby in The New York Times. However, her work was largely overshadowed by the death of fellow cast member Richard Burton, who delivered his final screen performance in the role of O'Brien, as well as by post-release controversy over the film's musical score.

In 1985, Hamilton starred in British playwright David Hare's film Wetherby, opposite Vanessa Redgrave. Her next role was as Felicity in Sydney Pollack's Academy Award-winning Out of Africa, based on the memoirs of the Danish writer Isak Dinesen, and starring Meryl Streep, Robert Redford and Klaus Maria Brandauer.

By the latter half of the decade, the majority of her screen roles were in obscure European films made in exotic locations as well as numerous British television dramas. In the 1986 German film, , which was shot in Thailand and loosely based on Joseph Conrad's 1915 novel Victory, Hamilton was cast as a saxophonist in an all-woman band touring seedy hotels and nightclubs in Southeast Asia. Her character, Julie, escapes a life of sexual slavery by fleeing with an eccentric German adventurer, played by Jürgen Prochnow, and the two of them take refuge on an island near Indonesia, which is already populated by a savage native warrior tribe. Also in 1986, Hamilton starred in the well-received television drama Johnny Bull,

In 1991, she appeared as Amelia, one of the five daughters placed under house arrest by their domineering mother, in the BBC adaptation of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca's play The House of Bernarda Alba;

In 1997, she appeared in The Island on Bird Street, and in 2017 she played "Sarah" in the BBC series The Cuckoo's Calling.

Theatre Hamilton is an accomplished theatre and radio actress. She made her first West End appearance on the London stage in 1982 as part of the original cast production of Tom Stoppard's play, The Real Thing. In 1993, she played the lead as a Welsh maid in the Bush Theatre's production of Lucinda Coxon's Waiting at the Water's Edge; in 2002, she was cast as Creusa in a Gate Theatre production of Euripides' Ion; and in early 2005, she appeared as Dora, a woman incarcerated in a 1920s asylum in the Salisbury Playhouse's production of Charlotte Jones' chamber drama, Airswimming. She also appeared in a 1991 audiobook recording of Julian Barnes' novel about a love triangle called Talking It Over and has been in many radio dramas. In May 2018 she played Shakespeare's Juliet (in old age) for The Theatre, Chipping Norton, in Ben Power A Tender Thing and in August 2019 she portrayed a Rhodesian estate owner in My One True Friend at the Tristan Bates Theatre, London. In 2022 she performed at the Assembly George Square Studios in We Should Definitely Have More Dancing to critical acclaim.

Personal life Hamilton spent a short time away from acting in major films to bring up her son but continued to feature in television roles and in theatre and voice work.

Filmography

Film Year Title Role Notes 1974 Swallows and Amazons Susan Walker Credited as Zanna Hamilton 1979 Tess Izz Huett 1980 The Wildcats of St. Trinians Matilda 1982 Brimstone and Treacle Patricia Bates 1984 Goodie-Two-Shoes Veronica 1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four Julia 1985 Wetherby Karen Creasy 1985 Out of Africa Felicity 1987 (Des Teufels Paradies) Julie 1989 The Voice (Die Stimme) Julia 1992 Tale of a Vampire Anne / Virginia 1997 The Island on Bird Street Stasya's mother 2005 Benjamin's Struggle Vivienne 2016 My Feral Heart Pete's mother 2022 Little Mary Mary Selected for LA Shorts Fest, 2022 TBD Harper Post-production

Television