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When she was four she learned to read, and before long had found a blissful refuge in romantic Victorian novels —about lonely little girls. She also daydreamed a good deal, and Father approved. "Like the Brontës," he says, "she lived in great islands of imagination that were entirely her own creation." Daydreams found an outlet in play acting. With Brother Corin, Vanessa performed for several years an almost daily drama in which he was an Austrian prince and she was the President of the U.S.—Daddy's girl was already ambitious. When Lynn came along, she was allowed to play a dog or a cat. "And I liked that," she says, "because dogs and cats got fed things, and it was even all right if they stole bits of food because they didn't know any better."
Lynn was a cheerful child from the beginning ("In my childhood I remember only things like sunny days"), though it wasn't always easy to see why. She developed acute anemia and was so weak that she went to the park in a wheelchair until she was six. She remembers Vanessa as "simply smashing," Corin as "incredibly brilliant," and her mother as "the mother of all the mothers."
"I Can't See My Head!" The teens were a bit gritty for both the Redgrave girls, particularly for Vanessa. Her father once introduced her to friends as "my daughter Vanessa—she'll never be an actress, so we're having her do languages. That way she can always get a job with an airline or something." She grew like a beanstalk on a hill of hormones. One day, after staring appalled at her reflection, she broke into tears and telephoned her mother, who was weekending in the country. "Mummy! Mummy!" she cried, "I just looked in your mirror and I can't see my head!" Daddy as usual had the answer: "Don't worry about being tall. Hold yourself up and be splendid." He prescribed ballet, and the medicine worked. Vanessa's grace and poise improved, and she showed her mettle in school theatricals. At 14, she played a St. Joan so powerful that her parents were awed. Says proud Papa: "The whole school revolved around Vanessa's personality."
The fact was all too apparent to little Lynn. Instead of leading lady she played a shepherd in the school Nativity play. Her only line: "I see a star." She developed such a virulent indifference to everything theatrical that one day, when her father asked if she wouldn't like to come watch him play Hamlet, she quite seriously said thanks all the same but she'd rather stay home and watch her favorite soap opera on the telly. Soon she developed a compensating mania—she went crazy over jumping horses, and by the time she was 16 had littered the house with glittering trophies that all said the same thing: Lynn can do something the others can't do.
Glamor & Clamor. Meanwhile, Vanessa went into the theater and had her self a thundering great success. First year out of school she was in two West End plays; by 1959 she was signed on at the Stratford Old Vic; and in a 1961 production of As You Like It, she played a Rosalind of such fire and grace that most theater people were agreed: for the next 25 years any actress who values her reputation will think twice before playing Rosalind in England.