Suzanna Hamilton, born on September 12, 1960, is an English actress renowned for her versatility and captivating performances in film, television, theatre, and radio. She gained significant recognition for her role as Julia in the 1984 film adaptation of George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four," and has since built an impressive body of work across various genres and mediums.
Suzanna Hamilton at a film premiere in London, 2016.
Early Life and Training
Hamilton's journey into acting began with training at the Anna Scher Theatre School in Islington in 1973. She further honed her skills at the Central School of Speech and Drama in Swiss Cottage, Camden. Early in her career, she became a protégée of filmmaker Claude Whatham, who discovered her in a children's experimental theatre in North London in the early 1970s.
Breakthrough Role in "Tess" (1979)
Suzanna Hamilton's first major screen role was as Izz Huett in Roman Polanski's "Tess" (1979). For her first appearance in a big-budget film, Hamilton played Izz Huett, the lovesick dairymaid, in the Roman Polanski film Tess (1979), based on Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, which starred Nastassja Kinski in the title role.
"Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1984): A Defining Moment
Hamilton's portrayal of Julia opposite John Hurt as Winston Smith in Michael Radford's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1984) remains one of her most memorable roles. Hamilton was cast as Julia opposite John Hurt as Winston Smith in the Michael Radford film Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), based on the eponymous George Orwell 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. The film's reputation has steadily grown since its release.
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1984
"Out of Africa" (1985): Portraying Felicity
In 1985, Hamilton appeared in Sydney Pollack's "Out of Africa," where she played Felicity, a young woman who befriends Karen Blixen (Meryl Streep). In Out of Africa (1985), Suzanna Hamilton plays Felicity. "Hello, the house!" Felicity shouts to Karen as she leaps off her horse, triumphantly announcing that she'd brought dinner. She's just killed a gazelle and it's strapped to the back of her horse. Felicity's the first person in town to address Karen's lack of practical style: a brash, awkward young lady with no filter between her brain and her mouth.
Beryl Markham, who inspired the character of Felicity.
Felicity is an entirely fabricated character for the film. Karen did have a young friend, about fifteen years younger, named Beryl Markham, but the filmmakers didn't have the rights to tell her story. She was the first woman to fly east to west across the Atlantic Ocean and wrote a memoir of her own, West with the Night.
Character Analysis of Felicity
Felicity is depicted as a spirited and candid individual, someone who is not afraid to speak her mind. That brashness comes out again when she arrives at the house to talk about the war, only to get down to brass tacks about why she's really there.
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FELICITY: You've been round and about. Someday, I'd like to run my own show the way you do.
KAREN: Is that what I do?
FELICITY: You don't seem to need us much. Baroness, may I ask you something? I don't know much about men. I want them to like me, but I…I want to be let alone too. I'm supposed to want to be taken, aren't I? I've got this book. But how do you know when to do what they want you to...and when not to?
KAREN: I suppose you ought to call me Karen.
Felicity's questions are an excellent way to show Karen in a more sensual light: to remind us that she can bring the sexy, too, and more importantly, to show us that she's liberated for the time. The character serves to highlight Karen's independence and unconventional approach to life in colonial Africa.
Diverse Roles in Film and Television
1985 was a very busy year for Suzanna Hamilton. She went on to feature in many more motion-pictures and television dramas including British playwright David Hare's "Wetherby". 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, Devil's Paradise, 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. Also in 1986, Hamilton starred in the well-received television drama Johnny Bull, a film developed at the National Playwrights' Conference of the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center and filmed in Tennessee. In 1987, she played the spirited but careless Anglo-French SOE spy, Matty Firman, in Wish Me Luck - an LWT miniseries, this one set in occupied France during World War II. In 1989, she starred as the inscrutable femme fatale Anna Raven in the BBC miniseries of Never Come Back, a noirish conspiracy thriller based on the celebrated 1941 novel by John Mair, which takes place on the eve of the London Blitz during the so-called "Phoney War" of 1939-40.
In the 1990s, Suzanna had a recurring role as Dr. Karen Goodliffe on the British TV hospital dramatic series "Casualty". Her next commercial film role was in a low-budget Gothic horror romance, Tale of a Vampire (1992). In 1997, she appeared in The Island on Bird Street, a Danish period drama made in the Dogme 95 style. More recently she has featured in the BBC's long running TV series "Silent Witness" and UK independent feature film "My Feral Heart" (2016).
Stage and Radio Career
Suzanna Hamilton is also an accomplished theater 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.
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