British Icon of the Week: Imelda Staunton, the Down-to-Earth Actress Who's A True Professional

Happy birthday, Imelda Staunton! The much loved actress turns 66 Sunday (January 9), so we're celebrating by making her our British Icon of the Week. Here are 10 of the things we admire and enjoy about this versatile performer.
1. She comes from a humble and hardworking background.
"Both my parents were Irish immigrants. Dad, Joe, was a laborer and my mum, Bridie, was a hairdresser," Staunton told The Guardian a few years ago. "I grew up in Archway, north London, and we lived above the hairdresser’s. Mum was a real grafter, which I’ve inherited. She had me at 21 and shortly after was managing a large hairdressers, which she later owned. I wasn’t spoilt, but I didn’t want for anything."
Speaking about her mother, Staunton added touchingly: "Mum insisted on paying for me to go to a private convent [school] because she wanted me to be educated and have opportunities that she didn’t. The urge to perform came from her. My parents never spoke about their ambitions for me. You didn’t talk about a future then, you just grew up and worked. All the working-class Irish immigrants they knew all worked mainly on building sites driving JCBs and that kind of stuff. Mum had the best job of any of the women."
2. She's an amazing stage actress.
Staunton has won four Olivier Awards – the top prize in U.K. theater – from an incredible 13 nominations. She won one of her Oliviers for her performance as Mama Rose in a 2016 revival of Gypsy; check out her show-stopping rendition of "Everything's Coming Up Roses" below.
3. She's a real professional.
As Staunton recalled on The Graham Norton Show, she wasn't even put off when a live mouse clambered into her Gypsy costume...
4. She's an Oscar nominee.
Staunton was nominated for Best Actress in 2005 for her devastating performance in Vera Drake. She plays the title character, a working-class woman living in 1950s London who performs illegal abortions out of the goodness of her heart. It's a film that's tough to watch without tearing up at least once. 
5. She's super down-to-earth.
During an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, Staunton recalled taking sandwiches to the Oscars so her then 11-year-old daughter wouldn't get hungry. When she says "How English of me!", you'll definitely agree.
 

6. She's the star of The Crown's final two seasons.
Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth II? Hold the Emmy! We cannot wait to see her in season five, which is expected to premiere later this year. 
7. She's married to actor Jim Carter – a.k.a. Carson from Downton Abbey.
Staunton and Carter starred together in the Downton Abbey movie, where she played the upper-crust Lady Bagshaw and he reprised his role as the house butler. They parodied this “upstairs downstairs” discrepancy during an amusing lockdown interview on The Graham Norton Show. They're the very epitome of "couple goals."

8. She played one of Harry Potter's greatest baddies.
We're still pretty scared of Professor Umbridge, to be honest. 
9. She can do a great Welsh accent.
Staunton gives another great performance in the 2014 movie Pride, which tells the story of the unlikely union between downtrodden Welsh miners and London-based LGBTQ+ activists in the 1980s. Staunton plays Hefina Headon, a key campaigner behind the high-profile miners' strikes of the times.
10. She hasn't let success go to her head.
"After work, I don’t want to then have to dress up and be with people talking about the job I do. No, I just do the job and then I go home and do my shopping and my cooking," she told The Independent in 2019. "There’s no doubt that that other side of the business has increased a million-fold. It’s all just noise and fluff and filler. The word celebrity makes me feel sick when it’s applied to me, because I’m not. I’m a jobbing actor. That’s really all I want to do, and I don’t know what all that other stuff’s about."
Do you have a favorite Imelda Staunton performance we haven’t mentioned?