The 'jolliest' Redgrave

Lynn Redgrave, Golden Globe-winning actress and the most whimsical member of England's drama dynasty, died at her Connecticut home Sunday night after a seven-year journey with breast cancer.

The actress, author, Weight Watchers spokeswoman, and mother was 67. She had never been so prolific as she was during her 60s, when she wrote a book about living with cancer and starred in one-woman shows about her illustrious parents, the eminent Shakespeareans Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson.

The pixieish redhead grew up in the shadow of her older siblings, Vanessa, the commanding stage presence of a generation, and Corin, an actor who died in April at 70.

"It was always 'Corin's the brain, Vanessa's the shining star, oh, and then there's Lynn,' " Ms. Redgrave told an interviewer a decade ago.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the gravity of her famous clan, Ms. Redgrave was drawn to levity. Her first stage appearance was in Much Ado About Nothing and her first significant movie role as a serving wench in the comedy Tom Jones (1963), directed by Tony Richardson, her brother-in-law.

"She was maybe the jolliest and most likable of the Redgraves," British broadcaster Michael Parkinson said Monday.

The cornflower-eyed actress made an indelible impression as the title figure in Georgy Girl (1966), a doughy Londoner with man troubles. As the Bridget Jones of her day, she was as delectable as a blueberry crumpet. The movie earned Ms. Redgrave a Golden Globe, the first of two Oscar nominations, and an offscreen romance with costar James Mason.

In love with her roommate's boyfriend and pursued by her father's boss, Georgy comforts herself (and the audience) with the slapstick wisdom: "God always has another custard pie up his sleeve."

Which pretty much sums up Ms. Redgrave's banana-peel career of slips and bounce-backs. Though she followed up Georgy Girl with the likewise farcical Smashing Time (1967), as a Cockney bird spreading her wings in '60s London, she never duplicated Georgy's success. Refusing to be a one-hit wonder, Ms. Redgrave matured into a distinctive character actress.

After a string of roles as the chubby-but-funny pal (including the 1974 Broadway play My Fat Friend), she went on to blaze a career as a television lead (House Calls), and etched memorable performances on stage and screen. She won Tony nominations for Mrs. Warren's Profession, Shakespeare for My Father, and The Constant Wife. She earned a second Oscar bid, and a second Globe, for Gods and Monsters.

In 1967 Ms. Redgrave wed the Anglo-Canadian actor John Clark. They had three children, Ben, Pema and Annabel, and divorced in 2000.

Though she was ebullient and upbeat in interviews, Ms. Redgrave's personal life was the stuff of soap opera. After her stint with Weight Watchers, she disclosed that she had struggled with bulimia. And the precipitating cause of her divorce was that her husband of 32 years had sired a child with the woman who would become her daughter-in-law.

In 2004, Ms. Redgrave and her daughter Annabel Clark collaborated on the book Journal: A Mother and Daughter's Recovery From Breast Cancer.

In an interview with CNN while promoting the book, Ms. Redgrave said, "I thought I was living very fully before this happened. . . . I didn't see things as brightly or as sharply or as memorably as I do now. . . . It's a big price to pay, isn't it - to have to have cancer to learn that? But it is, in the end, I have to say, a price worth paying."

Ms. Redgrave's death follows that of her brother, Corin, by three weeks and that of her niece, actress Natasha Richardson, by a year.

Bill Condon, who directed Ms. Redgrave as the pickle-puss housekeeper in Gods and Monsters, mourned her yesterday: "So sad. She had so much more she wanted to do."

She is survived by her sister, three children, and six grandchildren. A private funeral will be held this week.