IN CONVERSATION WITH MIRIAM MARGOLYES

PRESENTED BY OMNIBUS THEATRE

HOSTED BY JOHN O'FARRELL

Join us for a special evening with the award-winning star of stage and screen; Miriam Margolyes. All proceeds from ticket sales go towards supporting Omnibus Theatre

Born in Oxford, England, in 1941 and educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, Miriam Margolyes is a veteran of stage and screen. An award-winning actress who has achieved success on both sides of the Atlantic. Winner of the BAFTA Best Supporting Actress award in 1993 for The Age of Innocence, she also received Best Supporting Actress at the 1989 LA Critics Circle Awards for her role in Little Dorrit and a Sony Radio Award for Best Actress in 1993 for her unabridged recording of Oliver Twist. She was the voice of the Matchmaker in Mulan and Fly, the mother dog, in Babe. 

Major film credits during her long and celebrated career include Yentl, Little Shop of Horrors, I Love You to Death, End of Days, Sunshine, Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, Cold Comfort Farm, and Magnolia. She starred in Stephen Hopkins' The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Modigliani, Istvan Szabo's Being Julia and Ladies in Lavender (dir. Charles Dance, with the Dames, Smith and Dench). Margolyes was Professor Sprout in two of the Harry Potter films. In 2013, Margolyes played Lady Thyrza in The Legend of Longwood. In 2014, she played Odamee Marshall in the heart-warming film Outlier and Maria in Jumaan Short’s award-winning short film Mother. In 2023, she played Judy in My Happy Endings with Andie MacDowell and Sally Phillips and has recently completed filming Holy Days in New Zealand, playing Sister Luke.

Miriam is an accomplished TV actor whose memorable TV credits include Old Flames, Freud, Life and Loves of a She-Devil, Blackadder, The Girls of Slender Means, Oliver Twist, The History Man, Vanity Fair and Supply and Demand, Frannie's Turn, and was a Guest Star in Dharma and Greg and in the Miss Marple episode, Murder at the Vicarage. Her 2004 BBC TV documentary series about Charles Dickens, Dickens in America, was a worldwide success. Most recently Miriam has fronted Miriam’s Big American Adventure, then Miriam’s Big Fat Adventure, and Miriam’s Dead Good Adventure. Between 2021 and 2022, Miriam and Alan Cummings travelled around Scotland and the US with C4 for Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland and Lost in Scotland and Beyond. In 2022/3, Miriam Margolyes: Almost Australian and Australia Unmasked documentaries were released, winning the AACTA Award for Best Documentary or Factual Program. Followed in 2024 with Miriam Margolyes: Impossibly Australian. Her latest Travelogue took her to New Zealand in 2024, soon to be released in the UK in 2025.

Miriam is an internationally esteemed stage actor whose extensive credits include Madame Morrible, Wicked, Blithe Spirit, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Way of the World, The Vagina Monologues, Romeo and Juliet, She Stoops to Conquer, Orpheus Descending, The Killing of Sister George, The Threepenny Opera and her own award-winning, one-woman show, Dicken’s Woman. She starred in Beckett’s Endgame, playing Nell, for which she won the WhatsOnStage Award for Best Supporting Actress for the second time. Most recently, she returned to the Park Theatre with Sydney and the Old Girl and played the leading role in Lady in the Van. Miriam is regarded as the most accomplished female voice in Britain, having recorded many audiobooks including Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Alice in Wonderland, Matilda, Pinocchio, The Worst Witch series and one of the best-selling audiobooks in the world The Queen and I. Miriam has voiced many TV documentaries, including The Human Body and numerous commercials as well as animated series including Disney miniseries Nina Needs to Go and Nina Needs to Eat. Her recording for Audible of Bleak House won Best Classic Audiobook of 2019. Radio is another medium Miriam excels, between 2015 and 2018, she played Vera Sackcloth-Vest in the Radio 4 series Gloomsbury, and she also recorded 6 podcasts for Audible, Growing Old Disgracefully. She is currently working on her own podcast series.

Her TV talk show appearances are hugely watched, especially the Graham Norton Show, Loose Women, The Last Leg and in Ireland, The Late Show. Miriam has also written two books about her life, to huge acclaim from the Critics “There’s never been a memoir so packed with eye-popping, hilarious, and candid stories” Daily Mail.

In 2002, H.M. The Queen awarded her the Order of the British Empire for her services to Drama. In 2013, she achieved Dual Citizenship by becoming an Australian citizen and in 2022, she was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by BBC Radio.

Hosted by John O’Farrell, join us for this special evening where Miriam will delight us with tales of her illustrious career.

John O’Farrell is one of Britain’s best-known comic authors and scriptwriters and one of few to achieve best-seller status with both fiction and non-fiction. His novels have been translated into over thirty languages and adapted for TV and radio. Titles include, Things Can Only Get Better, The Best A Man Can Get, May Contain Nuts, An Utterly Impartial History of Britain and The Man Who Forgot His Wife plus three collections of his satirical columns for The Guardian. His sixth novel Family Politics was published in paperback in November. He was one of the lead scriptwriters for Spitting Image and Have I Got News For You (on which he has also appeared).

Having written on the original animation classic Chicken Run, he recently co-wrote Chicken Run Dawn of the Nugget. He co-wrote the book for the hit Broadway musical Something Rotten! and with the same team adapted Mrs Doubtfire into a musical (Shaftesbury Theatre). His most recent show Just For One Day, the Live Aid Musical will be opened in the West End last year, following a sell-out run at the Old Vic

All proceeds from ticket sales go towards Omnibus Theatre. As a registered charity, with no guaranteed funding, we rely entirely on ticket sales, hires and donations.