Jenny Agutter

Biography:

Jenny Agutter was born on December 20, 1952, in Taunton, Somerset, England, to Derek Agutter, a British Army entertainment manager, and Catherine Agutter. Raised as a Roman Catholic, she has Irish ancestry on her mother’s side. During her childhood, she lived in Singapore, Dhekelia (Cyprus), and Kuala Lumpur (Malaya). From ages eight to sixteen, she attended the Elmhurst Ballet School, a boarding school, and later briefly studied at the Arts Educational School before leaving to star in The Railway Children.

Agutter first gained attention on television in the BBC series The Newcomers, where she played Kirsty, the daughter of a new managing director, appearing only during school holidays and credited as “Jennifer.” In 1966, she played a ballet student in Disney’s Ballerina, followed by a role as Pamela, the neglected daughter of Gertrude Lawrence, in the 1968 musical Star!. She then appeared as Roberta in both the BBC adaptation (1968) and the 1970 film of The Railway Children, and took on a more dramatic role in the thriller I Start Counting (1969). Agutter won an Emmy for her supporting role as Fritha in the television adaptation of The Snow Goose (1971).

Transitioning to adult roles, she starred in Walkabout (1971) as a teenage schoolgirl lost in the Australian outback, filmed when she was sixteen. The movie included nude scenes, some of which were cut from the US release. She later moved to Hollywood at age 21, appearing in films such as The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Logan’s Run (1976), Equus (1977)—for which she won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress—An American Werewolf in London (1981), and The Survivor (1981). Agutter has commented that her early roles’ innocence, contrasted with the more adult themes and nudity in later films, made them appealing to audiences.

Returning to the UK in 1990 to focus on family, Agutter shifted to British television. She appeared in adaptations of Jeffrey Archer’s Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less and BBC’s The Buccaneers, with guest roles in series including Red Dwarf and Heartbeat. In 2000, she played the mother in a third adaptation of The Railway Children. She also had recurring TV roles in Spooks, The Invisibles, Monday Monday, and The Alan Clark Diaries. Resuming Hollywood work in 2012, she appeared in The Avengers and later in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, while continuing her role as Sister Julienne in BBC’s Call the Midwife.

Agutter has had a long theatre career, debuting on stage in 1970. She performed at the National Theatre (1972–73), took the title role in a Hedda Gabler adaptation at the Roundhouse (1980), and with the Royal Shakespeare Company (1982–83) in roles including Alice in Arden of Faversham, Regan in King Lear, and Fontanelle in Lear. On Broadway (1987–88), she played Pat Green in Breaking the Code about Alan Turing, and in 1995 appeared in an RSC production of Love’s Labour’s Lost in Tokyo. She is a patron of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, supporting UK schoolchildren performing Shakespeare in professional theatres.

Agutter met Swedish hotelier Johan Tham at a 1989 arts festival in Bath. They married in August 1990, and their son Jonathan was born on December 25, 1990. Jonathan studied at Cambridge and is a physician. Agutter resides in London and has had a long-standing interest in Cornwall, where she once owned a second home on the Trelowarren Estate.

She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2012 for her charitable work. In 2014, she was among 200 public figures who signed a letter in The Guardian advocating for Scotland to remain part of the UK.

Agutter has supported various causes, notably raising awareness of cystic fibrosis, which claimed the lives of two of her siblings and affects her niece. She is a patron of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust and, as a carrier of the genetic mutation, influenced an episode of Call the Midwife to focus on the condition.