Jenny Agutter

Jenny Agutter (birthname: Jennifer Ann Agutter) is a veteran British actor who started as a gifted child actor and developed a following in several successful films in the 1970s. One of these ‘70s-era films, The Railway Children (1970), was revived by Agutter in 2022 when she starred in the sequel, The Railway Children Return, directed by Morgan Matthews and co-starring Sheridan Smith.

Jenny Agutter’s screen debut at age 11 was Columbia Pictures’ adventure movie, East of Sudan (1964), starring Anthony Quayle and Sylvia Sims. Agutter’s next film credit was in the support for co-directors Ronald Neame’s and Cliff Owen’s Universal Pictures’ production, A Man Could Get Killed (1966), starring James Garner, Melina Mercouri, Sandra Dee, and Anthony Franciosa. Agutter was next cast in Gates to Paradise (1968), her first film directed by a major European filmmaker, Andrzej Wajda (imagining the world of the Crusades), and co-starring Lionel Stander and Mathieu Carriere. Agutter was uncredited in director Robert Wise’s musical showbiz biopic, Star! (1968), starring Julie Andrews and Richard Crenna.

Jenny Agutter landed her first starring role, at 16, in the controversial serial killer movie, I Start Counting! (1970), with Bryan Marshall and Simon Ward, followed by another starring role in writer-director Lionel Jeffries’ family film, The Railway Children (1970), released by MGM. Jenny Agutter’s most important role happened in 1971 as the lead in Nicolas Roeg’s magnificent, highly acclaimed adventure-survival film, Walkabout (1971), with David Gulpilil, competing at the Cannes Film Festival.

It marked Agutter’s first nude scene, which sparked some controversy at the time. Agutter took time off from working in movies, until her striking return as a co-star in director Michael Anderson’s 23^rd-century-set dystopian drama, Logan’s Run (1976), with Michael York, Richard Jordan, Roscoe Lee Browne, Farrah Fawcett-Majors, and Peter Ustinov. One of the few women in a colorful cast, Jenny Agutter was a co-star in director John Sturges’ WWII thriller, The Eagle Has Landed (1976), starring Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasance, Anthony Quayle, Jean Marsh, and Treat Williams.

Jenny Agutter won a BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actress for her fine performance in Sidney Lumet’s film version of Peter Shaffer’s play, Equus (1977), starring Richard Burton, Peter Firth, Joan Plowright, and Colin Blakely. Agutter’s ability to switch periods and genres was on display again in director Mike Newell’s entertaining version of Alexandre Dumas’ The Man in the Iron Mask (1977), starring Richard Chamberlain, Patrick McGoohan, Ralph Richardson, Louis Jourdan, Ian Holm, and Hugh Fraser.

A wonderful, stylish, unjustly little-seen Western, Monte Hellman’s terrific Italian/Spanish-produced China 9, Liberty 37 (also known in Italian as Amore piombo e furore, or Love, Lead, and Fury), was Agutter’s entry into so-called “spaghetti westerns” but with the Monte Hellman accent, making for a unique project starring Fabio Testi, Warren Oates, and, in a rare on-screen performance, master director Sam Peckinpah.

Jenny Agutter joined the cast of Cliff Robertson, Jean Simmons, Simon Ward, and Ron Moody for the Michael Anderson-directed horror film, Dominique (1979), followed by one of the last films produced by the venerable British company, The Rank Organisation, the British spy thriller The Riddle of the Sands (1979), reuniting Agutter with Logan’s Run co-star Michael York. Agutter played opposite Sam Waterston in the romantic drama, Sweet William (1980), based on Beryl Bainbridge’s novel and featuring Anna Massey, Tim Pigott-Smith, and Melvyn Bragg.

Jenny Agutter made Disney movie history in 1981, starring in Amy, the first film produced by Walt Disney Pictures for an adult audience, co-starring Barry Newman, Kathleen Nolan, and Nanette Fabray, and which, though intended for television broadcast, was then theatrically released. Agutter’s next feature, The Survivor (1981), is now only known as one of the films directed by David Hemmings and the last screen credit for actor Joseph Cotton, as well as earning Agutter a Best Actress nomination from the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards.

Agutter co-starred with David Naughton and Griffin Dunne in writer-director John Landis’ influential, smash hit horror-comedy, An American Werewolf in London (1981), earning $62 million worldwide on a $5.8 million budget. Agutter joined an august cast for the BFI-produced 18^th century-set King of the Wind (1990), including Richard Harris, Glenda Jackson, Frank Finlay, Nigel Hawthorne, Anthony Quayle, and Ian Richardson. Agutter jumped into the slasher film genre with the sequel, Child’s Play 2 (1990), with Alex Vincent and Grace Zabriskie, followed by a cameo in Sam Raimi’s stylish Darkman (1990), with Liam Neeson, Frances McDormand, and Colin Friels. Agutter joined the supporting cast of director John Duigan’s comedy, The Parole Officer (2001), starring Steve Coogan.

Jenny Agutter was in a more significant film next, with writer-director Sam Garbarski’s acclaimed Irina Palm (2007), starring Marianne Faithfull, and competing at the Berlin Film Festival. Agutter collaborated with writer-director Stephen Poliakoff in the WWII thriller, Glorious 39 (2009), starring Romola Garai, Bill Nighy, Julie Christie, Eddie Redmayne, David Tennant, and Christopher Lee. Agutter had a small supporting role in her second movie with director John Landis, Burke & Hare (2010), with Simon Pegg, Andy Serkis, Isla Fisher, Lee, and Tim Curry. Agutter joined Bob Hoskins for the Thatcher-era comedy, Outside Bet (2012).

Agutter entered the world of the MCU in the supporting cast of Joss Whedon’s The Avengers (2012) as Councilwoman Hawley, with Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, and Scarlett Johansson, and repeated her role in Anthony Russo’s and Joe Russo’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), with Evans, Johansson, and Anthony Mackie. Werner Herzog’s first narrative feature in six years, Queen of the Desert (2015), was Agutter’s next film project, starring Nicole Kidman, Damian Lewis, and Robert Pattinson. Along with Bill Nighy and Sam Riley, Agutter was part of the lead cast in debut director Carl Hunter’s Sometimes Always Never (2018), which premiered at the London Film Festival and finally was released in the U.S. in 2020.