Emily Lloyd
Emily Lloyd | |
|---|---|
| Born | Emily Lloyd Pack |
| Occupation | Actress |
Emily Lloyd (born Emily Lloyd Pack; September 29, 1970) is an English actress.[1]
Early life
Emily Lloyd Pack was born in London, the daughter of Sheila (née Laden), now known as Sheila Hughes, a theatrical agent who was a longtime secretary at Harold Pinter's stage agency, and Roger Lloyd Pack, a stage actor, well-known as Trigger in the British hit sitcom Only Fools and Horses.[2] Her grandfather, Charles Lloyd Pack, was also a stage and film actor. Her parents divorced when she was two years old. She and her younger sister Charlotte grew up with their mother.
Career
Early roles
At age 15, Lloyd was taking acting lessons at the Italia Conti School in London. In 1986, director David Leland cast her for the leading role in his movie Wish You Were Here.[3] The movie was based loosely on the memoirs of British madam Cynthia Payne. Lloyd's younger sister played the 11-year-old Lynda in a flashback sequence. Wish You Were Here was a success at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival and Lloyd was celebrated as new and fresh talent. She received the Evening Standard Film Award and the Award of the National Society of Film Critics in 1987. She was also nominated for a BAFTA award.[4]
In 1988, she appeared in Cookie by Susan Seidelman and In Country by Norman Jewison, but both movies were box office flops. Her next film was Chicago Joe and the Showgirl. It was directed by Bernard Rose and David Yallop's screenplay based on the well-known "cleft chin murder". In 1989 she received an offer for the movie Mermaids by Richard Benjamin. Due to problems with the film's star, Cher, who thought that Lloyd didn't fit as her onscreen daughter, she lost the role to Winona Ryder. Lloyd sued Orion Pictures and received $175,000 in damages. Later in 1992 she appeared in her most successful film to date, A River Runs Through It. In 1997, she appeared in a supporting role in the critically acclaimed film Welcome to Sarajevo by Michael Winterbottom.[5]
Later roles
Her first attempt as a stage actress was as Eliza, opposite Roy Marsden as Higgins, in the 1997 West End production of Pygmalion (Albery Theatre), produced by Bill Kenwright. On the 18 June, only ten days after rehearsals began, the original director walked out. The next day Lloyd left the production, amid rumours of her having been "asked to leave" (a highly unusual step in the theatre-world) and stories of threatened resignations from the rest of the cast if she had stayed.[6] Her part was taken by Carli Norris (which made her name) and Ray Cooney took over as director. Her next theatre work was as Bella Kooling in David Farr's Max Klapper - a Life in Pictures, presented at the Electric Cinema as "a play with film".
In 2002, she appeared in the thriller The Honeytrap, shot in London and directed by Michael G. Gunther, in which she starred alongside Valerie Edmond, Anthony Green and Stuart McQuarrie. In 2003, she appeared as Ophelia in Hamlet at the Shakespeare Festival in Leeds and Brighton. In 2004 she was cast in the British television series Denial, the British counterpart to Sex and the City, but according to media reports this show was cancelled. In 2008, she made an appearance in the short film The Conservatory by director Reed Van Dyk.
Health
In 1997, immediately following the Pygmalion production problems, Lloyd went to India. She was scheduled to make a film about a blind girl and she had an audience with the Dalai Lama. While waiting for the audience, she claimed that she was bitten by one of the temple dogs. The effects of the injury and having taken too many Lariam tablets resulted in her claiming that she had contracted rabies. This was later changed to Attention Deficit Disorder. She was "released" from the film, as the medication she was taking caused her to "have difficulty remembering her lines".[7][8]
Lloyd's health challenges are now recognized as having been more complex than originally understood. Since 1992, she has been struggling to overcome depression and anxiety,[7] in connection with which she spent two weeks under institutionalized psychiatric care at The Priory in the early 1990s.[8] At various points, in addition to attention deficit disorder, she has been diagnosed with mild schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette syndrome.[9][10]
Filmography
Awards
- 1987 National Society of Film Critics Award Best Actress in Wish You Were Here
- 1987 Evening Standard British Film Award Best Actress in Wish You Were Here
References
- ^ New York Times
- ^ Emily Lloyd Film Reference biography
- ^ New York Times
- ^ Bafta.org
- ^ New York Times
- ^ Nigel Dempster, Daily Mail, June 20, 1997
- ^ a b Sunday Mirror: "I Wish I Wasn't Cursed: Secret Hell of Film Starlet Emily Lloyd by Suzanne Kerins", Sunday Mirror. September 11, 2005 FindArticles.com Retrieved on September 19, 2007
- ^ a b Cassandra Jardine: Wild Child Who Went Over The Edge In: Daily Telegraph 2003/07/23 (Print Issue); also electronically reprinted
- ^ The Daily Mail
- ^ The Daily Mail
External links
- Emily Lloyd at IMDb
- Emily Lloyd at the BFI's Screenonline
- Emily Lloyd at AllMovie