Redgrave’s next feature was “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1968), a BAFTA-nominated historical drama by Tony Richardson (“Tom Jones,” 1963), who was Redgrave’s husband and the father of her two daughters. That union collapsed in 1967 amidst much-publicized allegations of his affair with French actress Jeanne Moreau. That same year, Redgrave crossed the Atlantic to star as Guinevere in the film version of the hit Broadway musical “Camelot” (1967). Her Lancelot was up-and-coming Italian actor Franco Nero, and their on-screen romance translated into an off-screen relationship which produced a son, future director and screenwriter Carlo Nero. Redgrave and Nero maintained an on-again off-again relationship for the next four decades before eventually tying the knot in 2007.

As Redgrave’s fame in film and on stage grew, so did her reputation as a fierce political campaigner for liberal and world causes. A socialist by her own description, she was arrested during anti-military and nuclear proliferation protests, as well as led marches against the Vietnam War in the United States. She also ran four times for a seat in the British Parliament as a candidate for the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, which advocated the dissolution of capitalism and the British monarchy. Her support for the IRA and the PLO in particular earned her criticism from Jewish groups, who protested her participation in the 1980 television movie “Playing for Time,” in which she played a concentration camp survivor – ultimately winning an Emmy for her performance. In the 1990s and 2000s, she was an outspoken advocate of the Chechen people’s struggle against the Russian government, and spoke out fervently against the war in Iraq. With her brother, Corin, she launched the Party for Peace and Progress, which stumped against the U.S. and U.K.’s involvement in Iraq, as well as for the rights of political dissidents and refugees.

Redgrave’s star dimmed a bit during the 1970s. The actress found it difficult to find substantial work on screen, and turned frequently to supporting parts or leads in artistic and independent-minded productions. She was top-billed opposite Glenda Jackson in “Mary, Queen of Scots” (1971) and earned an Oscar nod, but her subsequent appearances were seen by smaller and more select audiences. She was a mentally unstable nun whose passion for a local priest (Oliver Reed) leads to a horrific witch hunt in Ken Russell’s shocking “The Devils” (1971), and played the tragic Andromache opposite Katharine Hepburn in the US-Greek production of “The Trojan Women” (1971). She returned to film in 1974 as one of the all-star suspects in Sidney Lumet’s “Murder on the Orient Express,” and played a patient of Sigmund Freud whose plight attracts the attention of Sherlock Holmes in “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution” (1976). That same year, she made her Broadway debut in Henrik Ibsen’s “The Lady from the Sea.”

In 1977, Redgrave was cast in the small but pivotal title role in “Julia” (1977), based on playwright Lillian Hellman’s own friendship with a woman who later enlists her in a fight against the growing tide of Nazism in Europe. Redgrave won the Oscar for her impassioned performance, but the award ceremony was tainted by protests over her acceptance speech, which cited her refusal to cave in the face of threats from what she described as “Zionist hoodlums.” Her comments further exacerbated the anger of the Jewish Defense League, who had openly protested the Oscars over her nomination – as well as the 1977 documentary “The Palestinian,” which she had narrated and produced – and earned more than a few negative comments from the Hollywood community as well, most notably from screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, who criticized her during his Oscar broadcast presentation.

Though the wins for “Julia” and “Playing Time” cemented critical opinion of Redgrave’s talents, the controversy that was spurred by her political stance had a chilling effect on her career. For much of the next decade, she was seen in films that either failed at the box office – “Agatha” (1979) – or had a limited audience. Many of these projects performed well in arthouse circles, most notably as a lesbian suffragette in “The Bostonians” (1984), which earned her Oscar and Golden Globe nominations; “Wetherby” (1985), which marked the directorial debut of playwright David Hare; and “Prick Up Your Ears” (1987), which brought her a New York Film Critics Award for her turn as Peggy Ramsay, agent to playwright Joe Orton (Gary Oldman). Television also offered her exceptional roles, including that of transsexual tennis player Renee Richards in 1986’s “Second Serve” and the Joan Crawford role in a remake of “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane” opposite sister Lynne in 1991. She also appeared on Broadway for the first time in over a decade with a 1988 production of Tennessee Williams’ “Orpheus Descending,” which was filmed for broadcast on TNT in 1990. Still, there was stigma attached to Redgrave, as a 1984 lawsuit against the Boston Symphony Orchestra for canceling her performance as narrator of “Oedipus Rex” proved.

By the 1990s, however, Redgrave settled into a string of small but high profile roles in films. In “Howards End” (1993), she created controversy by bequeathing the title manor to middle class Emma Thompson, while in “Little Odessa” (1994), she was the seriously ill mother of Russian mobster Tim Roth. Tom Cruise and Brian De Palma handpicked her to play arms dealer “Max” in “Mission: Impossible” (1996), and she shone as Oscar Wilde’s mother in “Wilde” (1997) and in a rare lead as Virginia Woolf’s reflective heroine “Mrs. Dalloway” in 1997. Save for the latter, these supporting turns allowed Redgrave the fluidity to focus on other aspects of her career – from stage performances to her role as a United Nations Special Representative of the Arts, for which she mounted festivals in Kosovo and other war-torn regions. She and Corin also established the Moving Theater, which mounted a production of the long-lost Tennessee Williams play “Not About Nightingales” in 1998. She even found time to publish her autobiography in 1994.

By 2000 and beyond, Redgrave’s film career had settled into a regular pattern of supporting and lead roles in a wide variety of genres and styles. Turns in big budget productions like the campy TV miniseries “Bella Mafia” (1997) in which Redgrave was the female head of a mob family; the sci-fi disaster film “Deep Impact” (1998); and “Girl, Interrupted” (2000) were accompanied by stellar work in quieter fare like Sean Penn’s “The Pledge” (2001) and “A Rumor of Angels” (2000) with Ray Liotta. Redgrave’s turn as a sixties-era lesbian who loses her long-time partner in the tragic “1961” episode of HBO’s “If These Walls Could Talk 2” earned her a Golden Globe and an award for Excellence in Media from GLAAD. She followed this with an Emmy-nominated turn as Clementine Churchill, wife of famed British prime minister Winston Churchill in “The Gathering Storm” in 2002. In 2003, she received her first Tony Award for a Broadway production of “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”

The year 2005 saw Redgrave appear as a recurring character in the second season the FX Network’s controversial series, “Nip/Tuck” (2003- ) as the mother of Julia McNamara, played by her own daughter, Joely Richardson. She also co-starred with daughter Natasha in the well-regarded Merchant/Ivory production “The White Countess,” and enjoyed substantial parts in a string of critically lauded features, including “Venus” (2006) with Peter O’Toole; “Evening” (2007) with Meryl Streep, Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Glenn Close, and daughter Natasha; and “Atonement” (2007) with Keira Knightley and James McAvoy. Theater also proved fruitful for Redgrave during this period; not only was she awarded the Ibsen Centennial Award in 2006 for her efforts in plays by the acclaimed author, but she was nominated for a Tony as author Joan Didion in the one-woman play “The Year of Magical Thinking” (2007).