Fiona Mary Shaw, CBE is an Irish actress and theatre and opera director. Although to international
audiences she is primarily known for her role as Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter films
or her role portraying Marnie Stonebrook in the HBO series True Blood, she is an accomplished
classical actress. She has worked extensively with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the
National Theatre and was awarded an honorary CBE in 2001.
Early life Shaw was born in County Cork and was raised
in the Roman Catholic faith. Her father was an ophthalmic surgeon and her mother was a
physicist. She attended secondary school at Scoil Mhuire
in Cork City. She received her degree in University College Cork. She trained at the Royal Academy
of Dramatic Art in London and was part of 'new wave' of actors to emerge from the Academy.
She received much acclaim as Julia in the National Theatre production of Richard Sheridan's
The Rivals. Career
Her notable theatrical roles include Celia in As You Like It, Madame de Volanges in Les
Liaisons Dangereuses, Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew, Young Woman in Machinal, for
which she won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress, Winnie in Happy Days, and the
title roles in Electra, The Good Person of Sechuan, Hedda Gabler, The Prime of Miss Jean
Brodie and Medea. She performed T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land as a one-person show at
the Liberty Theatre in New York to great acclaim in 1996, winning the Drama Desk Award for
Outstanding One-Person Show for her performance. Shaw notably played the male lead in Richard
II, directed by Deborah Warner in 1995. Shaw has collaborated with Warner on a number of
occasions, on both stage and screen. Shaw has also worked in film and television, including
My Left Foot, Jane Eyre, Persuasion, Gormenghast, and five of the Harry Potter films in which
she played Harry Potter's insufferable aunt Petunia Dursley. Shaw had a brief but key
role in Brian DePalma's The Black Dahlia. In 2008, she directed her first opera, Riders
to the Sea by Vaughan Williams at the ENO and in 2010 her second Elegy for Young Lovers
by Hans Werner Henze.In 2013 she directed The Rape of Lucretia by composer Benjamin
Britten and librettist Ronald Duncan for the Glyndebourne Tour.
In 2009, Shaw collaborated with Deborah Warner again, taking the lead role in Tony Kushner's
translation of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children. In a 2002 article for The
Daily Telegraph, Rupert Christiansen described their professional relationship as "surely
one of the most richly creative partnerships in theatrical history." Other collaborations
between the two women include productions of Brecht's The Good Woman of Szechuan and
Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, the latter was adapted for television.
Shaw appeared in The Waste Land at Wilton's Music Hall in January 2010 and in a National
Theatre revival of London Assurance in March 2010. In November 2010, Shaw starred in Ibsen's
John Gabriel Borkman at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin alongside Alan Rickman and Lindsay
Duncan. Shaw appeared in season four of American TV
Show True Blood. Shaw's character, Marnie Stonebrook, has been described as an underachieving
palm reader who is spiritually possessed by an actual witch. Her character leads a coven
of necromancer witches who threaten the status quo in Bon Temps, erasing most of Eric Northman's
memories and leaving him almost helpless when he tries to kill her and break up their coven.
In 2012, Shaw appeared in the National Theatre revival of Scenes from an Execution by Howard
Barker. The world’s largest solo theatre festival,
United Solo recognized her performance in “The Testament of Mary” on Broadway with
the 2013 United Solo Special Award. Credits
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes The Taming of the Shrew
Electra My Left Foot
Mountains of the Moon Three Men and a Little Lady
Machinal Hedda Gabler
Super Mario Bros. Undercover Blues
Persuasion Jane Eyre
Anna Karenina Richard II
The Butcher Boy The Avengers
The Last September Gormenghast
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Medea
The Seventh Stream Doctor Sleep
The Triumph of Love Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
The PowerBook Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Midsummer Dream Empire
The Black Dahlia Catch and Release
Fracture Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Happy Days Dorian Gray
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1
Noi Credevamo Mother Courage and her Children
London Assurance The Tree of Life
True Blood The Testament of Mary
Stonehearst Asylum Greenshaw's Folly
Other projects, contributions When Love Speaks: "It is thy will thy image
should keep open" Simon Schama's John Donne: 2009
References
External links Fiona Shaw at the Internet Movie Database
Fiona Shaw at the Internet Broadway Database World Theatre – Working in the Theatre Seminar
video at American Theatre Wing.org, January 2002
Fiona Shaw interviewed by Sophie Elmhirst on New Statesman, September 2009