She was born in Savyon, Israel, to a European Jewish family with roots in England, Germany and Lithuania. At the age of about nine she went with her family to South Africa where they spent the next ten years. Her parents were religious Jews, but at the age of about thirteen, she rebelled against Judaism, particularly the morning prayer called Shacharit, in which men say, "I thank God that he did not make me a woman".
Career
While her father wanted her to be a lawyer, Udwin supported herself working in theatre and teaching while at university; in her first year she was raped, a fact she told nobody about at the time. She began her career as an actress at the Space Theatre in Cape Town, one of the only two integrated theatres in South Africa, playing in the Duchess of Malfi and Stephen Poliakoff’s Hitting Town. Not wishing to work in ‘whites-only’ theatres, her work possibilities in South Africa were limited, so she moved to London at age twenty-one. There she acted in plays at the Royal Court, National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company and Cheek By Jowl playing roles like Lady Macbeth, Isobel in The Mayor of Zalamea, Masha in Chekhov's Three Sisters, Nora in A Doll's House, etc. On screen she appeared in the BBC Shakespeare Series production of The Merchant of Venice. In 1989 she set a legal precedent in the High Court of England against criminal landlord Nicholas van Hoogstraten who harassed her and her fellow tenants in their Rent Act-protected apartment block in West London. Her real life two-and-a-half year battle against Hoogstraten was subsequently fictionalised by Peter Ransley in the 1989 TV drama Sitting Target for BBC 2's Screen Two anthology series, directed by Jenny Wilkes. Having initially urged BBC Head of Drama Mark Shivas to make the programme, Udwin worked as a script consultant with Ransley, and also starred as harassed tenant Vicki, alongside Jonathan Hyde as evil landlord Vincent Stott. Udwin also played Hyde's on-screen second wife in the contemporaneous historical legal drama seriesShadow of the Noose After ten years as an actress she wanted more: "It was an exciting career, but working as an actress was not enough for me – I began to want to choose and not just interpret the stories being told." This led her to become a producer. She started her production company, Assassin Films, in 1989. Her productions include the films East is East, Mrs Ratcliffe's Revolution, and West is West, and the documentary India's Daughter. Udwin also co-produced Who Bombed Birmingham? for Granada TV, about the prosecution and wrongful imprisonment of the ‘Birmingham Six’. The morning after the broadcast, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told the House of Commons: "We will not have trial by television in this country." Her feature filmEast is East promoted tolerance and the celebration of diversity as between the Asian and British communities. It won the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the BAFTA Awards, and was declared Best Comedy Film at the British Comedy Awards. Her time spent creating award-winning documentary India's Daughter led Leslee to found UK and US education charity Think Equal, of which she is the CEO. Leslee was voted by the NY Times the No 2 Most Impactful Woman of 2015, and has been awarded the prestigious Swedish Anna Lindh Human Rights Prize in 2015. She has also been named Safe's Global Hero of 2015, and a Global Thinker by Foreign Policy.
Awards and honours
Leslee Udwin has received the following national and international honours, listed by the date they were awarded:
