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In Georgy Girl, for example, she seemed at first to be playing the heroine for heehaws, for one of those hopelessly single shoes that plod through life interminably in search of a mate. Yet as the reels went by, the heroine changed slowly from a standard figure of fun to a unique and even sinister individual: a wounded and frightened young woman who wanted love but settled for power—with a husband she could dominate and a baby she could smother-mother. As Georgy, Lynn cunningly combined emotional empathy and ironical detachment. Says Sidney Lumet, who directed The Dead'y Affair, in which Lynn played a small role: "She can editorialize on a character without interrupting her portrayal of it." Acuity and control of this order, rare in one so young, intimate a talent for the highest comedy—the kind of loving laughter that hurts only what it heals.
"I Give As to a Lover." Vanessa, on the contrary, seems born to be a great leading lady, the Duse of the coming decade. She has that magic in her that all the great ones have: a sense of mystery and radiance in her presence. When she first appears on stage or screen, the spectator feels his skin begin to prickle. In A Man for All Seasons, she appeared in a single scene and spoke a single line, but the aura of her Anne Boleyn was so enthralling that she got more attention from many critics than most of the featured players. Yet Vanessa can play comedy too, and play it dazzlingly. In Morgan!, cast as the better-class bride of a young artist who after careful consideration has decided he is a gorilla, she performs a tour-de-force of the comedy of incomprehension.
Vanessa's way of working is dead opposite to Lynn's. Where Lynn begins with imitation and ends with insight, Vanessa begins with an idea of the character and ends with an illustration of that idea in gestures. Her roles are thought out logically and constructed move by move. She is a much more intellectual actress than Lynn, but no less imaginative and emotional for all that. If anything, she is even more passionately devoted to her profession. "I give myself to my parts as to a lover," she explains. "It is the only way."
Dogs & Cats. It is, in fact, her father's way. Sir Michael is a large, emphatic man whose demonic belief in his own genius and religious devotion to the theater (he once played a performance of Macbeth with a freshly broken ankle) are warmly encouraged by his wife. It was in this highly qualified atmosphere that Vanessa took her first breath on Jan. 30, 1937. She has called her early childhood lonely and frightening, and it isn't hard to see why. Her parents were often on tour or in Hollywood, once for nine months at a stretch, while Vanessa was left in a London flat in the care of servants. When she was three the blitz began, and it scared her stiff.