Miriam Margolyes Audiobooks

Scorsese, Dickens and Hogwarts in one career, and This Much Is True accounts for all of it

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Who is Miriam Margolyes?

Miriam Margolyes, born in 1941, is a British and Australian actress, comedian and writer who has spent more than five decades proving that character actors often outlast the stars they support. She won the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress as Mrs Mingott in Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, found a whole new generation of admirers as Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films, and was appointed OBE in 2002 for services to drama.

Her career began in the theatre before a film debut in the late 1960s, and the credits since are absurdly plentiful: Yentl, Little Dorrit, Romeo + Juliet and Ladies in Lavender among them, alongside voice work in Babe, Mulan and Happy Feet. On television she has ranged from Blackadder to Sister Mildred in Call the Midwife; on stage she toured her one-woman show Dickens’ Women for more than two decades, earning an Olivier nomination, and originated Madame Morrible in the West End production of Wicked.

Away from acting she has fronted travelogue series and written three memoirs, beginning with This Much Is True in 2021.

Miriam Margolyes in audiobooks

This Much Is True, her 2021 memoir, is the natural starting point in audio, and it plays to everything that has made Margolyes a national fixture: a life spent in theatre, film and television, told by a performer whose entire craft is the voice. This is someone who built a one-woman show around the women of Dickens and lent her voice to everything from Babe to Mulan, so the storytelling pedigree is not in doubt.

For UK listeners the appeal is simple: a backstage pass through decades of British stage and screen from someone who was present for a remarkable amount of it. Few careers stretch from Scorsese to Dickens to Hogwarts; the memoir explains how this one managed it.