Miriam Margolyes is one of Britain’s best loved and most provocative actresses. Across her eclectic career, she has played scene-stealing turns in Blackadder, voiced some of our most well-known adverts and found fame internationally as Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films. \n \nFollowing the release of her best-selling autobiography, This Much is True, Miriam opens up to Alan Yentob, with disarming frankness, about her career highs and her most vulnerable moments. Offering further insight into Miriam’s career are some of the actors who know her best, including Richard E Grant, Charles Dance, Dame Eileen Atkins, Patricia Hodge, Tony Robinson and Dame Vanessa Redgrave. \n \nMiriam’s one-person show, Dickens’ Women, won her great critical acclaim, and she received a Bafta for her performance in Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence. Yet, at age 80, she feels she has still not achieved enough.
Source: BBC 4
2020: This House Is Full Of Music
In its first remote-access film, imagine... offers a unique and intimate portrait of an exceptionally gifted musical family in lockdown – the Kanneh-Masons. In 2016, celli ...
22-06-2025
BBC 4
David Bowie: Cracked Actor
To mark David Bowie's comeback album and a new exhibition at the V&A, Alan Yentob looks back at his legendary 1975 documentary, Cracked Actor. The film follows Bowie during the ...
08-06-2025
BBC 4
Winter 2017/18: 2. Mel Brooks: Unwrapped
At the age of 91, Mel Brooks is unstoppable, with his musical Young Frankenstein opening to great critical acclaim in London in late 2017. Alan Yentob visits Mel at home in Holl ...
08-06-2025
BBC 4
2021: Tom Stoppard: A Charmed Life
Tom Stoppard is perhaps the world’s leading, funniest and cleverest playwright. Ever since he hit the ground running in the 1960s with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dea ...
08-06-2025
BBC 4
2021: Bernardine Evaristo: Never Give Up
Alan Yentob explores the remarkable life and work of the trailblazing Anglo-Nigerian author Bernardine Evaristo, whose Booker Prize-winning novel Girl, Woman, Other has become a ...
03-06-2025
BBC 4
Summer 2003: 2. Barbara Hepworth: Shapes Out Of Feelings
A profile of Barbara Hepworth, the world's first internationally celebrated woman sculptor. Born in Yorkshire in 1903, she had to fight to establish herself in a world dominated ...
20-05-2025
BBC 4
Winter 2017/18: 6. Andrew Lloyd Webber: Memories
Andrew Lloyd Webber has reigned over musical theatre for nearly five decades and delighted millions worldwide with hit shows like Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, The Phanto ...
18-05-2025
BBC 4
Summer 2009: 2. David Hockney - A Bigger Picture
Filmed over three years with unprecedented access, this documentary captures the return from California of England's favourite living artist.\n\nAs Hockney approaches the age of ...
06-05-2025
BBC 4
2019: 2. Jo Brand: No Holds Barred
She is boldly outspoken, fearlessly funny and unfailingly kind - Jo Brand has become one of Britain's best-loved comedians. Brand burst onto the nation's largely male stand-up c ...
14-09-2021
BBC 4
Spring 2018: 1. Rupert Everett: Born To Be Wilde
Prepare for an Odyssey. This is the remarkable story of Rupert Everett's ten-year quest to write, direct and star in his own film about the tragic last years of his hero Oscar W ...
04-06-2018
BBC 4
2023: French & Saunders: Pointed, Bitchy, Bitter
imagine... profiles the UK’s most successful double act of the last 40 years, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, and explores their unique brand of comedy, based on satire ...
27-12-2023
BBC 4
Winter 2005: 6. Sweet Home New Orleans
Could New Orleans's days as a great musical powerhouse be coming to an end? As Alan Yentob traces the city's vast musical heritage, he meets musicians who have lived and worked ...
15-11-2020
BBC 4
Spring 2007: 1. Gilbert And George: No Surrender
Arts series presented by Alan Yentob. Over the last 40 years, British artists Gilbert and George have fascinated, outraged, delighted and confounded the art establishment. Since ...
10-06-2024
BBC 4