Beyond acting, Redgrave has never been afraid to leverage her influence to champion political causes, no matter how radical or unfashionable they might seem at the time.
Redgrave demonstrated against the Vietnam and Iraq wars; ran for political office in Britain as a member of the Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary Party (she lost); and, at age 80, directed her first film, the documentary Sea Sorrow, exploring the plight of refugees to Europe.