Jenny Agutter

The Girl Who Didn't Want to Be a Star

Jenny Agutter was sixteen years old when Nicolas Roeg took her to the Australian desert to shoot Walkabout in 1971.

There was no finished script. Just a few pages of outline and a camera following her as she tried to maintain British decorum amid rocks and extreme heat. That film broke her image as a BBC child actress and launched her into a market that never quite understood her mix of shyness and physical presence.

And the gamble paid off.

Before that journey, she was already a familiar face in English homes thanks to The Railway Children. First in the 1968 series and then in the 1970 film. Her move into serious acting was abrupt and unsoftened. Agutter never went through the gentle transition phase that child actors of her generation usually had.

In 1976, she moved to Los Angeles to try her luck in the American film industry. She wasn't seeking mass fame, but she ended up starring in Logan’s Run alongside Michael York. The film cost $9 million and became a cult favorite among dystopian science fiction fans. Her role as Jessica 6 brought her international visibility, which she handled with an almost businesslike detachment.

Nudity, theater and a werewolf

Agutter always preferred the risk of the stage to the comfort of a studio contract. In 1977, she agreed to take part in the film version of Equus under the direction of Sidney Lumet. She won the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Jill Mason.

That award confirmed her ability to carry scenes with a suffocating psychological weight. But general audiences remember her for something far more visceral. In 1981, she took on the role of nurse Alex Price in An American Werewolf in London. John Landis chose her because he needed someone who could bring normalcy to a story of pure horror.

The film is famous for its transformation special effects. But the chemistry between Agutter and David Naughton carried the emotional core of the story.

Because she has always been an actress of restraint.

During the eighties and nineties, she alternated between Royal Shakespeare Company productions and television series appearances. She didn't mind giving up leading-lady status in film if the material made sense. In 1990, she appeared in Child’s Play 2 and shortly after returned to England to focus on projects more closely tied to British social reality.

A home in public television

Her career found a new focus in 2012 with the premiere of Call the Midwife. Playing Sister Julienne put her back at the center of mass television viewing. The series debuted with 10 million viewers in the United Kingdom and remained a pillar of BBC programming for more than a decade.

Agutter accepted the role because it let her explore postwar Britain from a female and nursing perspective. And so she settled into that register of gentle authority she handles so well. Her film appearances became surgical and very spaced out over time.

In 2012, she entered the Marvel universe with a supporting role in The Avengers. She returned as Councilwoman Hawley in Captain America: The Winter Soldier in 2014. It was a purely professional move that helped fund her life in Cornwall and her charity work.

And then she returned to her roots.

In 2022, she returned to the role of Roberta Waterbury in The Railway Children Return. Fifty-two years had passed since the original 1970 film. StudioCanal produced the project, and filming took place at the original West Yorkshire locations on a budget of 10 million pounds.