Jennifer Ann "Jenny" Agutter (born 20 December 1952) is a BAFTA- and Emmy award-winning English actress best known in recent years for her role as Tessa Phillips in the British TV drama series Spooks.

Biography

Early life

Agutter was born in Taunton, Somerset, the daughter of Catherine "Kit" (née Lynam) and Derek Brodie Agutter, a former British Army officer and live entertainment organizer. As a child, she lived in Dhekelia, Cyprus and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She was discovered while at Elmhurst Ballet School when a casting agent was looking for a young English-speaking girl for a film. She did not get the part, but he recommended her to the producers of East of Sudan (1964).

Career

Agutter first came to the attention of television audiences as Roberta in a BBC drama of The Railway Children, and went on to play the same part in Lionel Jeffries's 1970 film of the book. Her quality of ingenuousness had led to an earlier more serious role in what is now regarded as something of a horror cult film I Start Counting (1969). She also won an Emmy for her television role as Fritha in the Hallmark Hall of Fame production of The Snow Goose (1971). Agutter continued a transition to adult roles in Walkabout (1971), playing a teenage schoolgirl who was lost in the Australian outback with her younger brother. She first auditioned for the role in 1967 but funding problems delayed filming until 1969. The delay in production meant Agutter was 16 at the time of filming, and the director took advantage of her new legal status by including many nude scenes in the film. She commented during an interview at the 2005 Bradford Film Festival at the National Media Museum that she was shocked by the film's explicitness when she first viewed it, but is still on good terms with director Nicolas Roeg.

Agutter moved to Hollywood at 21 and appeared in a number of films over the next decade, including The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Logan's Run (1976), Equus (1977), Sweet William (1980), and An American Werewolf in London (1981). In Logan's Run and Equus, she appeared nude, prompting controversy. Since 1990, Agutter has deliberately focused on the upbringing of her son and much of her work focused away from film and television work and rather involved audio recordings and supporting various charities, notably the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, of which she is a patron (she is also a carrier of the disease). Nonetheless, she had a guest role in Series 6 of Red Dwarf, and appeared in the TV series TECX, The All New Alexei Sayle Show, and And The Beat Goes On. In 2000, she made her third appearance in a production of The Railway Children, produced by Carlton TV and this time playing the role of the mother. In 2002, Agutter featured in the BBC television series Spooks and in 2007, she starred in the first episode of the new series of David Jason's ITV television series Diamond Geezer. In 2007, she also guest-starred in the Doctor Who audio drama The Bride of Peladon.

Nudity

Agutter also attained a reputation for the amount of flesh she displayed in her films during the 1970s. Her first nude scenes - filmed when she was just 16 and among the most explicit - came in Walkabout (1971). They included an infamous five minute skinny-dipping scene which was cut from the original US release, and also some more nude bathing during a flashback sequence at the end of the film. Both of these scenes heavily feature both rear and full-frontal nudity. Walkabout was made before but released after The Railway Children and Agutter's nude scene shocked audiences that associated Agutter with the prim and reserved character she played in that film. It was generally seen as an attempt to break away from the child roles with which she had become associated.

It was a full five years before Agutter did any more nudity and it came in the surprising form of the PG rated Logan's Run (1976). Jenny has a full-frontal nude scene albeit at distance, and it is one of the rare instances of a PG film featuring nudity.

Her most explicit nude scenes came in Equus (1977), in which she enjoyed a romp in the hay with stable boy Peter Firth. There is full frontal and rear nudity from both actors in a prolonged scene. She quickly followed up Equus with Monte Hellman's China 9, Liberty 37 (1978) which also included a couple of full frontal nude scenes.

Towards the end of the 1970s Agutter started to rein it in a bit and her final nudity came in Sweet William (1980) and An American Werewolf in London (1980) which just featured topless nudity. There was something of a return to form for Agutter in Spooks (2002) in which she filmed a steamy sex scene in her late 40s, but the scene did not feature any nudity.

Personal life

Agutter remained resolutely single during her many years of residence in Los Angeles, to the point that it has been reported she claims to have never lived with a man until she was married. In 1989 while attending an arts festival in Bath she met Johan Tham, a Swedish hotelier who at the time was a director of Cliveden Hotel in Berkshire. In 1990, she became pregnant by Tham and they subsequently married on 4 August of that year. Their son Jonathan was born on 25 December 1990. They live in Camberwell, London. For many years Agutter, a big admirer of Cornwall, owns a second home on The Lizard (the most southerly point in the UK)

Filmography

Filmography
Year	Title	Format	Role	Other notes
1970	The Railway Children	Film
1971	Walkabout	Film
1972	Shelley	Television		BBC series
1976	Logan's Run	Film	Jessica 6
	The Eagle Has Landed	Film
1977	Equus	Film
1978	China 9, Liberty 37	Film
	The Riddle of the Sands	Film
1980	Sweet William	Film
1981	Othello	Film
	An American Werewolf in London	Film
1984	Secret Places	Film
1985	Love's Labour's Lost	Television
1990	Child's Play 2	Film
	Darkman	Film		uncredited cameo
1993	Red Dwarf	Television
2000	The Railway Children	Television		ITV
2001	The Parole Officer	Film
2002	At Dawning
	Spooks	Television
2004	Number One Longing, Number Two Regret
	The Alan Clark Diaries	Television	Jane Clark	BBC TV series
2007	Diamond Geezer	Television		ITV series
	Irina Palm	Television
2008	The Invisibles	Television	Barbara Riley	BBC TV series

References

External links

• Jenny Agutter's Official Website
• BBC - Spooks - Jenny Agutter Biography
• Jenny Agutter at the Internet Movie Database
• BBC Drama Faces - Jenny Agutter
• Jenny Agutter biography and credits at BFI Screenonline