virginia woolf biography movie

‘Orlando, My Political Biography’ Review: Virginia Woolf’s Famed Novel Anchors Poetic Trans Manifesto

Filmmaker Paul B. Preciado’s literate ode to the many Orlandos who walk the world is playful, urgent and brilliantly innovative in its way of exploring transgender identity.

By Manuel Betancourt

Manuel Betancourt

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Preciado understands how powerful a tale (a trans myth, really) “Orlando: A Biography” remains close to a century since it was first published. With his hybrid documentary, Preciado seeks out to cannibalize Woolf’s text. With voiceover musings and staged narrative vignettes, he ingests Woolf’s text and regurgitates it. In so doing, he creates an ever-refracted modern portrait of this fictional character, who turns out to be template and type for a community of trans, non-binary and gender-noncomforning subjects.

The key gesture of the documentary, in fact, turns out to be the intentional blending of fact and fiction, of story and history, of the literary and the lived-in. Throughout, Preciado introduces us to many Orlandos: “I’m Jenny Bel’Air,” one tells the camera, for instance. “In this film I’ll be Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.” Such a line is repeated every time we meet another Orlando, each of whom dons only a ruff (that pleated collar so associated with the 16th and 17th centuries) so as to create a sense of continuity between them. That disparate continuity is, for Preciado, very much the point. Understanding that trans and gender-nonconforming bodies are contested discursive spaces, the filmmaker is intent on offering a plural and pluralizing vision of Orlando as a trans archetype. It’s why they’re able to be depicted as easily by a self-described “trans boy” with ginger hair as by a trans woman from Venezuela.

On paper, Preciado’s film sounds too heady — too literate and literary, perhaps. This is a project that’s lofty in its ambitions, after all: “How does one construct an Orlandoesque life, a life of a gender poet in the midst of a binary and normative society?” it asks. With winning humor, it turns out. And an eye for self-conscious filmmaking (Preciado’s voice, camera and even light setups at times, are integral to its stylized metafictional conceit; society is a set and gender a performance, what better way to capture that than to revel in the very constructedness of filmmaking as such?). The film’s aesthetic, which makes room for costuming choices like white tees with silk-screen bras and for stagey sets that evoke Fassbinber and Almodóvar, further creates a trans cinematic archive that reaches back to images of Christine Jorgensen, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Riviera to tell a mosaic of a collective story.

If some images are a tad too absurd (several scrubbed-in doctors performing surgery on Woolf’s book, with scalpel in hand; an English-language disco dance number at a doctor’s office with lyrics like “They say you are dysphoric but it’s just metaphoric”), these merely push film and discourse into the realm of camp. Such winking knowingness squarely locates Preciado’s project in conversation with (and in debt to) a long line of queer filmmakers who have similarly used trenchant comedy to make narrative and cultural space for queer and trans folk alike.

With “Orlando, My Political Biography,” Preciado has crafted a towering manifesto that’s as nimble in presenting abstracted gender theorizations as it is in capturing moving emotional truths (credit here must also go to the film’s dynamic editor, Yotam Ben David). The film’s title may well defer to Woolf’s protagonist. But here is a keen-eyed and piercing adaptation that may well transform the way readers of that novel’s fickle, feminist figure will forever understand Woolf’s legacy, on the page and on the screen.

Reviewed online, Nov. 15, 2023. In Berlin, Toronto, New York, IDFA film festivals. Running time: 98 MIN.

• Production: (France) A Sideshow, Janus Films release of a Les Films du Poisson, 24 Images, Arte France production. Producers: Yaël Fogiel, Laetitia Gonzalez, Annie Ohayon-Dekel, Farid Rezkhallah.
• Crew: Director, writer: Paul B. Preciado. Camera: Victor Zebo. Editor: Yotam Ben David. Music: Clara Deshayes.
• With: Paul B. Preciado, Oscar S Miller, Janis Sahraoui, Liz Christin, Elios Levy, Victor Marzouk, Kori Ceballos, Vanasay Khamphommala, Ruben Rizza, Julia Jimmy Postollec, Amir Baylly, Naelle Dariya, Jenny Bel’Air, Emma Avena, Lilie Vincent, Artur Verri, Eléonore Lorent, La Bourette, Noam Iroual, Iris Crosnier, Clara Deshayes. (French, Spanish dialogue)

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Movies | How ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’…

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Movies | How ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ became a classic film despite the odds

The new book, ‘cocktails with george and martha,’ looks at how mike nichols, elizabeth taylor, richard burton and edward albee transformed the play into a lasting film..

A star known for her stellar beauty hides it under a wig, unflattering makeup and 30 extra pounds. A fiery actor signs on to play a milquetoast, broken man. A first-time director strips away the work of an Oscar-nominated writer – who also happens to be the producer – and then fights with the studio and fires the cinematographer. And the language in the script? Shocking, even scandalous.

What could go wrong? 

In “Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage and the Making of ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,’” which is in stores Feb. 13, Philip Gefter deftly depicts all of that, but also everything that went right in the making of this American classic. 

In a recent video interview, Gefter noted that when Edward Albee sold the rights from his hit play he joked about having a gentleman’s agreement with studio chief Jack Warner to cast Bette Davis and James Mason, but “For all I know, it would end up being Rock Hudson and Doris Day.”

Instead, Albee’s play got Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, possibly the most glamourous couple on earth at that point. On the surface, neither were right for the parts of George and Martha but they produced career-defining performances under Mike Nichols’ astute direction.

Gefter captures the larger-than-life personalities of all involved and the drama that went into the making of the film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q. What surprised you in your research?

Elizabeth Taylor’s level of entitlement was proportional to her fame — she was a kind of American royalty. Warner Brothers issued a kind of list of do’s and don’ts for dealing with the Burtons on the set – don’t talk to them unless they talk to you first. So she was profoundly spoiled, but her willingness to work when she was focused and the depth with which she reached for this character was impressive. 

Also, she was brought up making movies – she had already made 34 films – and she understood the nature of filmmaking. Haskell Wexler, the cinematographer, talked about how she understood what the camera would do before even he did. So she had a kind of professionalism that was impressive, even though she violated it often enough. 

And Nichols was brash, but also both an idealistic and sophisticated guy going to Hollywood where he is confronted with a way of working and a set of standards that are, to his mind, inferior and that present innumerable obstacles to his vision. Warner thought black-and-white was old-fashioned and the movie wouldn’t make money. Nichols says black-and-white is a metaphor, it’s not literal and that’s what this film is, a metaphor about life. But he also had a good argument to Warner that if the movie was in color, you would see too much of Elizabeth’s prosthetics and makeup. And Nichols could have walked off and gone back to New York — it might have even elevated his reputation with the New York press and the New York intelligentsia. So he had that in his back pocket. 

Q. You note that the film broke ground on how movies tackled marriage, paving the way for everything from “Scenes from a Marriage” to “Marriage Story.” 

American culture had been fairly anodyne before Albee; marriages in the media were Ricky and Lucy, the Cleavers, Ozzie and Harriet. Most of what came out of Hollywood and on television was kind of a caricature of what life is really like. It was a culture in which all underlying tensions were swept under the carpet. 

People were longing for their lives to be represented authentically. I think that’s why it was a phenomenon.

And it became a dividing line. Movies made over the next five years started to have a kind of psychotherapist’s eye view of marriage, like “Diary of a Mad Housewife.” The thing I discovered about “Scenes from a Marriage” is that, earlier, Ingmar Bergman was the first director of the European version of Albee’s play, so “Scenes” has “Virginia Woolf” DNA all over it. 

Q. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” was part of the shift from the 1950s to the 1960s. 

This movie exemplifies that shift; it both anticipated and precipitated the tumult of the ‘60s. I’m not saying it did so single-handedly, but when you look back you see this movie was right on the brink of the sexual revolution when life was getting to be more open and less conventional. The movie helped open things up. 

Q. The other 1967 Oscar nominees —“A Man for All Seasons,” which won, “Alfie,” “The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming,” and “The Sand Pebbles” – are largely forgotten and feel more dated. Why is the black-and-white play adaptation the one that still resonates?  

There’s something in Albee’s play that is so true to human nature. It’s true beyond its time. It’s a film about a marriage, but it’s really a film about marriage, and that’s why it endures. 

The dialogue is brilliant – one minute, you gasp and the next you laugh out loud. It’s witty, but also devastating in terms of the psychological battles that are fought, the kind of verbal sadism and the character assassination that I think is just part of the territory of marriage. It’s extreme, but it’s recognizable behavior. 

It’s an X-ray vision of marriage. It’s what happens beneath the surface. Couples maintain a certain kind of decorum in front of the people for the most part but George and Martha punctured that so you’re seeing what people feel but would never say in front of other people. 

Q. How do you think your take on the play and the movie has shifted over the years of your life and your marriage?

I’ve been married for 27 years. My experience and George and Martha’s are sort of aligned. I don’t mean we have arguments like that necessarily – I mean, it does happen occasionally – but the movie gives me a sense a relief: “Oh, it’s not just us. This is a human dynamic.” 

So it’s actually helpful.

Philip Gefter joins New York Times writer Alexandra Jacobs, author of “Still Here: The Madcap, Nervy, Singular Life of Elaine Stritch” for the celebrity biography episode of Bookish on Friday, Feb. 16 at 5 p.m.

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Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

1966, Drama, 2h 9m

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Critics Consensus

Led by a volcanic performance from Elizabeth Taylor, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a scathing adaptation of the Edward Albee play that serves as a brilliant calling card for debuting director Mike Nichols. Read critic reviews

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Who's afraid of virginia woolf   photos.

History professor George (Richard Burton) and his boozy wife, Martha (Elizabeth Taylor), return late one Saturday night from a cocktail party at the home of the college president, Martha's father. Martha announces that she invited another couple, newly appointed instructor Nick (George Segal) and his timid wife, Honey (Sandy Dennis), over for a nightcap. When the younger couple arrive, the night erupts into a no-holds-barred torrent of marital angst and verbal tirades.

Genre: Drama

Original Language: English

Director: Mike Nichols

Producer: Ernest Lehman

Writer: Edward Albee , Ernest Lehman

Release Date (Theaters): Jun 22, 1966  wide

Release Date (Streaming): May 1, 2008

Runtime: 2h 9m

Distributor: Warner Bros., Warner Home Vídeo

Production Co: Warner Brothers

Sound Mix: Mono

Cast & Crew

Elizabeth Taylor

Richard Burton

George Segal

Sandy Dennis

Agnes Flanagan

Roadhouse Waitress

Frank Flanagan

Roadhouse Manager

Mike Nichols

Edward Albee

Ernest Lehman

Original Music

Haskell Wexler

Cinematographer

Sam O'Steen

Film Editing

News & Interviews for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

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AFI Announces Top 100 Movies of All Time … Again

Critic Reviews for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Audience reviews for who's afraid of virginia woolf.

As this black and white film opens and the credits are rolling, we see a couple leaving a party and walking slowly back to their house. They're arm-in-arm and seemingly all is quiet and right with the world. The second the action starts, when Liz Taylor flicks on the light and we begin hearing her talk with Richard Burton, we know all is definitely not right. And thus begins 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'. The two play a college history professor and his wife, who is also the dean's daughter, and we quickly come to know that they are (a) very unhappy and frustrated with one another, (b) highly blunt and sarcastic in expressing this, and (c) functioning alcoholics. The first scene which lasts something like 50 minutes and has a younger professor and his wife (George Segal and Sandy Dennis) coming over to drinks is absolutely stunning. The script and Taylor and Burton's performances are outstanding. Humiliation, flirting with the opposite sex, telling stories and confusing "truth and illusion" to play mind games with the other are the order of the day, and the two serve it up again and again in ways which may make your jaw drop. The movie is minimalistic in the sense that it only has these four major characters, two extremely minor characters (who briefly appear when they visit a roadside bar), and it all takes place in a single night, mostly in their home. However, the performances are explosive and 'larger than life'. Taylor in particular really put herself out there, because let's face it, putting on weight and acting like a loud, cheap, bully is far more dangerous for a woman than it is for a man. Images of the SNL sketch from a decade later may come to your mind as she munches on a chicken leg and then carelessly tosses the bone back on the plate in the fridge. She is absolutely exceptional, and was worthy of the Academy Award she received. I was also reminded of the power in some of Jennifer Lawrence's recent performances as I watched her, but Taylor takes it to another level. Burton is also fantastic, trying to remain intellectual and appear above it all, but displaying a frustrated rage within and constantly needling all the three of the other characters. When he goes out for the rifle in the garage as Taylor is telling an embarrassing story about him and returns with it, we feel serious tension, and I thought first-time director Mike Nichols did a great job here and throughout the movie. It loses a teeny bit of momentum towards the middle, and I have to say, the story behind their child, whose apparent death seems to be an explanation for why they've gone a bit kooky, but who has been an imaginary child all along, does not ring true, at least in the emotions it evokes out of each of them. While it's a symbol of an unrealized dream they share, just as Burton's failure to advance in the hierarchy at the college is, to me this is a weakness in the original play. The ending, which as them tenderly resigned to one another despite all that bickering and fighting (and bottle breaking, and choking!), is powerful nonetheless. It's not exactly a feel-good movie, but it's one that will stir you.

Taylor and Burton use their previous off screen romance to full effect methinks as George and Martha on the night when the walls fall down around their relationship.

This film is a must-see simply because it is a classic, it is expertly written, and Elizabeth Taylor is absolutely mesmerizing. However, while the beginning of the film is full of energy, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? unfortunately delves into a static melodrama. I am reluctant to criticize the film because of its iconic status, but it simply did not engage me in the way that I hoped it would. It's only particularly impressive in the amount of emotion displayed on the screen.

The vitriolic honesty of the impeccable source material when paired with a quartet of the finest performances in film history make for a work of legends..... Just doesn't make too much sense as to why the couple opposite Martha and George don't just.... Leave.

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Books | how ‘who’s afraid of virginia woolf’ became a classic film despite the odds, the new book, 'cocktails with george and martha,' looks at how mike nichols, elizabeth taylor, richard burton and edward albee transformed the play into a lasting film..

A star known for her stellar beauty hides it under a wig, unflattering makeup and 30 extra pounds. A fiery actor signs on to play a milquetoast, broken man. A first-time director strips away the work of an Oscar-nominated writer – who also happens to be the producer – and then fights with the studio and fires the cinematographer. And the language in the script? Shocking, even scandalous.

What could go wrong? 

In “Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage and the Making of ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,’” which is in stores Feb. 13, Philip Gefter deftly depicts all of that, but also everything that went right in the making of this American classic. 

SEE ALSO : Sign up for our free Book Pages newsletter about bestsellers, authors and more

In a recent video interview, Gefter noted that when Edward Albee sold the rights from his hit play he joked about having a gentleman’s agreement with studio chief Jack Warner to cast Bette Davis and James Mason, but “For all I know, it would end up being Rock Hudson and Doris Day.”

Instead, Albee’s play got Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, possibly the most glamourous couple on earth at that point. On the surface, neither were right for the parts of George and Martha but they produced career-defining performances under Mike Nichols’ astute direction.

Gefter captures the larger-than-life personalities of all involved and the drama that went into the making of the film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q. What surprised you in your research?

Elizabeth Taylor’s level of entitlement was proportional to her fame — she was a kind of American royalty. Warner Brothers issued a kind of list of do’s and don’ts for dealing with the Burtons on the set – don’t talk to them unless they talk to you first. So she was profoundly spoiled, but her willingness to work when she was focused and the depth with which she reached for this character was impressive. 

Also, she was brought up making movies – she had already made 34 films – and she understood the nature of filmmaking. Haskell Wexler, the cinematographer, talked about how she understood what the camera would do before even he did. So she had a kind of professionalism that was impressive, even though she violated it often enough. 

And Nichols was brash, but also both an idealistic and sophisticated guy going to Hollywood where he is confronted with a way of working and a set of standards that are, to his mind, inferior and that present innumerable obstacles to his vision. Warner thought black-and-white was old-fashioned and the movie wouldn’t make money. Nichols says black-and-white is a metaphor, it’s not literal and that’s what this film is, a metaphor about life. But he also had a good argument to Warner that if the movie was in color, you would see too much of Elizabeth’s prosthetics and makeup. And Nichols could have walked off and gone back to New York — it might have even elevated his reputation with the New York press and the New York intelligentsia. So he had that in his back pocket. 

Q. You note that the film broke ground on how movies tackled marriage, paving the way for everything from “Scenes from a Marriage” to “Marriage Story.” 

American culture had been fairly anodyne before Albee; marriages in the media were Ricky and Lucy, the Cleavers, Ozzie and Harriet. Most of what came out of Hollywood and on television was kind of a caricature of what life is really like. It was a culture in which all underlying tensions were swept under the carpet. 

People were longing for their lives to be represented authentically. I think that’s why it was a phenomenon.

And it became a dividing line. Movies made over the next five years started to have a kind of psychotherapist’s eye view of marriage, like “Diary of a Mad Housewife.” The thing I discovered about “Scenes from a Marriage” is that, earlier, Ingmar Bergman was the first director of the European version of Albee’s play, so “Scenes” has “Virginia Woolf” DNA all over it. 

Q. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” was part of the shift from the 1950s to the 1960s. 

This movie exemplifies that shift; it both anticipated and precipitated the tumult of the ‘60s. I’m not saying it did so single-handedly, but when you look back you see this movie was right on the brink of the sexual revolution when life was getting to be more open and less conventional. The movie helped open things up. 

Q. The other 1967 Oscar nominees —“A Man for All Seasons,” which won, “Alfie,” “The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming,” and “The Sand Pebbles” – are largely forgotten and feel more dated. Why is the black-and-white play adaptation the one that still resonates?  

There’s something in Albee’s play that is so true to human nature. It’s true beyond its time. It’s a film about a marriage, but it’s really a film about marriage, and that’s why it endures. 

The dialogue is brilliant – one minute, you gasp and the next you laugh out loud. It’s witty, but also devastating in terms of the psychological battles that are fought, the kind of verbal sadism and the character assassination that I think is just part of the territory of marriage. It’s extreme, but it’s recognizable behavior. 

It’s an X-ray vision of marriage. It’s what happens beneath the surface. Couples maintain a certain kind of decorum in front of the people for the most part but George and Martha punctured that so you’re seeing what people feel but would never say in front of other people. 

Q. How do you think your take on the play and the movie has shifted over the years of your life and your marriage?

I’ve been married for 27 years. My experience and George and Martha’s are sort of aligned. I don’t mean we have arguments like that necessarily – I mean, it does happen occasionally – but the movie gives me a sense a relief: “Oh, it’s not just us. This is a human dynamic.” 

So it’s actually helpful.

Philip Gefter joins New York Times writer Alexandra Jacobs, author of “Still Here: The Madcap, Nervy, Singular Life of Elaine Stritch” for the celebrity biography episode of Bookish on Friday, Feb. 16 at 5 p.m.

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What Was Virginia Woolf Really Afraid Of?

Leonard Woolf had effectively kept his wife alive throughout their marriage, supporting and encouraging her through her numerous dark times and breakdowns. The program seeks to understand a ... Read all Leonard Woolf had effectively kept his wife alive throughout their marriage, supporting and encouraging her through her numerous dark times and breakdowns. The program seeks to understand a remarkable but deeply troubled life. Leonard Woolf had effectively kept his wife alive throughout their marriage, supporting and encouraging her through her numerous dark times and breakdowns. The program seeks to understand a remarkable but deeply troubled life.

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‘Orlando, My Political Biography’ Trailer: Paul B. Preciado Tells the Trans Story Through Virginia Woolf

Ryan lattanzio, deputy editor, film.

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Virginia Woolf’s novel “Orlando: A Biography” charts 300 years in the life of a male nobleman who, beginning in the times of Elizabeth I, eventually experiences an unexplained sex change at age 30. Orlando then lives the rest of her days as a woman. The 1928 book remains a classic of gender and feminist studies but is largely considered the first great work of trans fiction, later inspiring Sally Potter’s own 1992 movie , “Orlando,” with Tilda Swinton .

More here from the official synopsis: “Come, come! I’m sick to death of this particular self. I want another.” Taking Virginia Woolf’s novel “Orlando: A Biography” as its starting point, academic virtuoso turned filmmaker Paul B. Preciado has fashioned the documentary as a personal essay, historical analysis, and manifesto. For almost a century, Woolf’s eponymous hero/heroine has inspired readers for their gender fluidity across physical and spiritual metamorphoses over a 300-year lifetime. Preciado casts a diverse cross-section of trans and non-binary individuals in the role of Orlando as they perform interpretations of scenes from the novel, weaving into Woolf’s narrative their own stories of identity and transition. Not content to simply update a seminal work, Preciado interrogates the relevance of Orlando in the continuing struggle against anti-trans ideologies and in the fight for global trans rights.

Janus and Sideshow Films release “Orlando, My Political Autobiography” on November 10 in New York City and November 17 in Los Angeles, with an expansion to follow. IndieWire shares the exclusive trailer below.

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Transgender philosopher-filmmaker Paul B. Preciado's "Orlando, My Political Biography" starts with footage of the filmmaker on a city street at night, wheatpasting posters with slogans, questions, and cryptic statements, and only becomes more playfully abstruse from there. The film is "political" in that politics are personal, and less of a biography than a work of literary criticism in cinematic form and an essay on art, society, and sexual identity that roams wherever it wants or needs to. 

It's framed as a reply to Virginia Woolf 's novel Orlando , whose protagonist goes to sleep one night as a man and awakes as a woman, then moves through time that way. (Thirty years ago, Sally Potter directed a now-beloved film adaptation starring Tilda Swinton .) Preciado is fascinated by the Woolf book and respectful of its impact but also irked by how it glossed over the details of the process by which Orlando was transformed. 

The film takes an "I am Spartacus" approach to the text, casting an assortment of trans and nonbinary performers as a gallery of incarnations of Orlando or as people who give their first name as Orlando (including Oscar S Miller and Janis Sahraoui), plus one who plays the actual Woolf character. Then it puts them in dramatic or comedic sketches (and in some cases, tableaus that feel almost like art installations, sometimes with visible lighting rigs) and lets them muse on the process of transitioning and the obstacles placed in the paths of individuals trying to do it. 

One sequence shows a group of Orlandos waiting in a doctor's office who can prescribe hormones. Back in the doctor's office, one of the Orlandos is asked intrusive and leading questions about their feelings about their genitalia, and a subsequent conversation between Orlandos reveals that one has to lie to the doctor and say that you hate your genitals to get the prescription—one of many examples of how people's right to determine their own identity and presentation is held hostage by the rest of society, including the appointed gatekeepers of the medical establishment.

"Orlando, My Political Biography" is an example of the kind of movie that rarely gets made or released today, and that wasn't all that common even during the heyday of quasi-experimental arthouse cinema. Appropriately, considering the subject matter, it refuses to get pinned down to prescribed labels or meanings or even genres, leaping freely between different storytelling modes, sometimes without much of a segue to smooth over the jump. It doesn't hang together in any conventional way, and sometimes it seems to wander into a cul-de-sac and get stuck. But you always appreciate the refusal to be bound by any preexisting playbook of how cinema is supposed to do, well, anything. It's a work of fertile imagination that takes every step confidently, even if it isn't certain where it will lead.

Preciado, a Spaniard from a modest background, has an outsider's posturing energy and a low, scratchy voice that evokes the narrated essay films of the older  Jean-Luc Godard . The movie's use of text is also Godardian (the font is similar to the ones Godard used in some of his pre-80s movies). So is the willingness to throw the audience into the deep end of the pool and expect them to swim.

Introducing himself as the first of many Orlandos, Preciado tells us that somebody once asked him why he never wrote a book about his own experience. “Because f**king Virginia Woolf wrote my biography in 1928,” he replied, a statement that is both true and not true and which the film proceeds to illustrate at its own pace and on its own terms. Woolf, Preciado tells us, found a way to hint at the story of trans and genderqueer people before there were words to describe them. "You have never been as alive as now," he says.

In limited release today.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Virginia Woolf

(1882-1941)

Who Was Virginia Woolf?

Born into a privileged English household in 1882, author Virginia Woolf was raised by free-thinking parents. She began writing as a young girl and published her first novel, The Voyage Out , in 1915. She wrote modernist classics including Mrs. Dallowa y, To the Lighthouse and Orlando , as well as pioneering feminist works, A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas . In her personal life, she suffered bouts of deep depression. She committed suicide in 1941, at the age of 59.

Born on January 25, 1882, Adeline Virginia Stephen was raised in a remarkable household. Her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, was a historian and author, as well as one of the most prominent figures in the golden age of mountaineering. Woolf’s mother, Julia Prinsep Stephen (née Jackson), had been born in India and later served as a model for several Pre-Raphaelite painters. She was also a nurse and wrote a book on the profession. Both of her parents had been married and widowed before marrying each other. Woolf had three full siblings — Thoby, Vanessa and Adrian — and four half-siblings — Laura Makepeace Stephen and George, Gerald and Stella Duckworth. The eight children lived under one roof at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington.

Two of Woolf’s brothers had been educated at Cambridge, but all the girls were taught at home and utilized the splendid confines of the family’s lush Victorian library. Moreover, Woolf’s parents were extremely well connected, both socially and artistically. Her father was a friend to William Thackeray, the father of his first wife who died unexpectedly, and George Henry Lewes, as well as many other noted thinkers. Her mother’s aunt was the famous 19th century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. 

From the time of her birth until 1895, Woolf spent her summers in St. Ives, a beach town at the very southwestern tip of England. The Stephens’ summer home, Talland House, which is still standing today, looks out at the dramatic Porthminster Bay and has a view of the Godrevy Lighthouse, which inspired her writing. In her later memoirs, Woolf recalled St. Ives with a great fondness. In fact, she incorporated scenes from those early summers into her modernist novel, To the Lighthouse (1927).

As a young girl, Virginia was curious, light-hearted and playful. She started a family newspaper, the Hyde Park Gate News , to document her family’s humorous anecdotes. However, early traumas darkened her childhood, including being sexually abused by her half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth, which she wrote about in her essays  A Sketch of the Past and 22 Hyde Park Gate . In 1895, at the age of 13, she also had to cope with the sudden death of her mother from rheumatic fever, which led to her first mental breakdown, and the loss of her half-sister Stella, who had become the head of the household, two years later. 

While dealing with her personal losses, Woolf continued her studies in German, Greek and Latin at the Ladies’ Department of King’s College London. Her four years of study introduced her to a handful of radical feminists at the helm of educational reforms. In 1904, her father died from stomach cancer, which contributed to another emotional setback that led to Woolf being institutionalized for a brief period. Virginia Woolf’s dance between literary expression and personal desolation would continue for the rest of her life. In 1905, she began writing professionally as a contributor for The Times Literary Supplement . A year later, Woolf's 26-year-old brother Thoby died from typhoid fever after a family trip to Greece. 

After their father's death, Woolf's sister Vanessa and brother Adrian sold the family home in Hyde Park Gate, and purchased a house in the Bloomsbury area of London. During this period, Virginia met several members of the Bloomsbury Group, a circle of intellectuals and artists including the art critic Clive Bell, who married Virginia's sister Vanessa, the novelist E.M. Forster, the painter Duncan Grant, the biographer Lytton Strachey, economist John Maynard Keynes and essayist Leonard Woolf, among others. The group became famous in 1910 for the Dreadnought Hoax, a practical joke in which members of the group dressed up as a delegation of Ethiopian royals, including Virginia disguised as a bearded man, and successfully persuaded the English Royal Navy to show them their warship, the HMS Dreadnought . After the outrageous act, Leonard Woolf and Virginia became closer, and eventually they were married on August 10, 1912. The two shared a passionate love for one another for the rest of their lives.

Literary Work

Several years before marrying Leonard, Virginia had begun working on her first novel. The original title was Melymbrosia . After nine years and innumerable drafts, it was released in 1915 as The Voyage Out. Woolf used the book to experiment with several literary tools, including compelling and unusual narrative perspectives, dream-states and free association prose. Two years later, the Woolfs bought a used printing press and established Hogarth Press, their own publishing house operated out of their home, Hogarth House. Virginia and Leonard published some of their writing, as well as the work of Sigmund Freud, Katharine Mansfield and T.S. Eliot. 

A year after the end of World War I, the Woolfs purchased Monk's House, a cottage in the village of Rodmell in 1919, and that same year Virginia published Night and Day , a novel set in Edwardian England. Her third novel  Jacob's Room  was published by Hogarth in 1922. Based on her brother Thoby, it was considered a significant departure from her earlier novels with its modernist elements. That year, she met author, poet and landscape gardener Vita Sackville-West, the wife of English diplomat Harold Nicolson. Virginia and Vita began a friendship that developed into a romantic affair. Although their affair eventually ended, they remained friends until Virginia Woolf's death.

In 1925, Woolf received rave reviews for  Mrs. Dalloway , her fourth novel. The mesmerizing story interweaved interior monologues and raised issues of feminism, mental illness and homosexuality in post-World War I England. Mrs. Dalloway was adapted into a 1997 film, starring Vanessa Redgrave, and inspired The Hours , a 1998 novel by Michael Cunningham and a 2002 film adaptation. Her 1928 novel, To the Lighthouse , was another critical success and considered revolutionary for its stream of consciousness storytelling.The modernist classic examines the subtext of human relationships through the lives of the Ramsay family as they vacation on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. 

Woolf found a literary muse in Sackville-West, the inspiration for Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando , which follows an English nobleman who mysteriously becomes a woman at the age of 30 and lives on for over three centuries of English history. The novel was a breakthrough for Woolf who received critical praise for the groundbreaking work, as well as a newfound level of popularity.

In 1929, Woolf published A Room of One's Own , a feminist essay based on lectures she had given at women's colleges, in which she examines women's role in literature. In the work, she sets forth the idea that “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Woolf pushed narrative boundaries in her next work, The Waves (1931), which she described as "a play-poem" written in the voices of six different characters. Woolf published  The Years , the final novel published in her lifetime in 1937, about a family's history over the course of a generation. The following year she published Three Guineas , an essay which continued the feminist themes of A Room of One's Own and addressed fascism and war.

Throughout her career, Woolf spoke regularly at colleges and universities, penned dramatic letters, wrote moving essays and self-published a long list of short stories. By her mid-forties, she had established herself as an intellectual, an innovative and influential writer and pioneering feminist. Her ability to balance dream-like scenes with deeply tense plot lines earned her incredible respect from peers and the public alike. Despite her outward success, she continued to regularly suffer from debilitating bouts of depression and dramatic mood swings.

Suicide and Legacy

Woolf's husband, Leonard, always by her side, was quite aware of any signs that pointed to his wife’s descent into depression. He saw, as she was working on what would be her final manuscript, Between the Acts  (published posthumously in 1941),that she was sinking into deepening despair. At the time, World War II was raging on and the couple decided if England was invaded by Germany, they would commit suicide together, fearing that Leonard, who was Jewish, would be in particular danger. In 1940, the couple’s London home was destroyed during the Blitz, the Germans bombing of the city. 

Unable to cope with her despair, Woolf pulled on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones and walked into the River Ouse on March 28, 1941. As she waded into the water, the stream took her with it. The authorities found her body three weeks later. Leonard Woolf had her cremated and her remains were scattered at their home, Monk's House.

Although her popularity decreased after World War II, Woolf's work resonated again with a new generation of readers during the feminist movement of the 1970s. Woolf remains one of the most influential authors of the 21st century.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Virginia Woolf
• Birth Year: 1882
• Birth date: January 25, 1882
• Birth City: Kensington, London, England
• Birth Country: United Kingdom
• Gender: Female
• Best Known For: English author Virginia Woolf wrote modernist classics including 'Mrs. Dalloway' and 'To the Lighthouse,' as well as pioneering feminist texts, 'A Room of One's Own' and 'Three Guineas.'
• Fiction and Poetry
• Journalism and Nonfiction
• Astrological Sign: Aquarius
• Death Year: 1941
• Death date: March 28, 1941
• Death City: Near Lewes, East Sussex, England
• Death Country: United Kingdom

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Virginia Woolf Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/virginia-woolf
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: September 12, 2022
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
• One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.

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How a first-time filmmaker turned a Virginia Woolf novel into a ‘survival’ strategy

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For Spanish-born philosopher turned director Paul B. Preciado, poetry is about “the freedom of transforming language,” he says during a recent video call. His debut film, “ Orlando, My Political Biography ,” out now in theaters, is also a kind of poetry. Utilizing an army of trans and nonbinary performers who he describes as “gender poets,” Preciado celebrates the fluidity of gender itself, wresting it away from a mainstream framework. (Already, “Orlando” is being hailed by critics and festival audiences as a trans landmark.)

Preciado’s journey to making “Orlando” began when a French-German production company approached him about making a film around his life and work. (The popular scholar and author, 53, teaches in Paris and has himself transitioned.) He initially tried to convince them to drop the idea.

“I knew at that point that that was not the way in which I wanted my life to be told,” he says, flinching at the idea of something conventional despite its good intentions: a story “from a binary perspective,” going from being assigned female to male along an expected narrative.

His efforts to dissuade the producers involved suggesting alternate subjects, including French feminist theorist Monique Wittig and transgender activist-author Leslie Feinberg . When they remained undeterred, Preciado suggested that any film about his life “should be a documentary adaptation of ‘Orlando,’ by Virginia Woolf .”

“It’s very funny because I said ‘documentary adaptation’ without knowing what I meant by that,” says Preciado, still amused by the turn of events. “For me, this was a way of saying: This is the end of the conversation.”

But it wasn’t. His ultimatum generated even more excitement and Preciado was urged to figure out what a documentary adaptation might, in fact, look like.

“ Orlando, My Political Biography ,” which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, is the answer. It resists easy categorization. A cinematic essay in conversation with Woolf’s 1928 satiric fantasy “Orlando: A Biography,” the documentary enlists more than 20 onscreen testifiers to share the role of the novel’s eponymous hero, an aristocratic poet who wakes up a different sex one day, to convey the breadth of the character’s legacy.

Among the film’s cast are well-known French LGBTQ+ figures including the iconic Jenny Bel’Air, “Baise-moi” writer-director Virginie Despentes (whom Preciado dated for several years) and the art duo Pierre et Gilles . It also includes footage of singer and trans pioneer Christine Jorgensen and fiery advocate Sylvia Rivera, reflecting a rich history of queer resistance.

Review: Playful and rousing, ‘Orlando, My Political Biography’ calls for trans dignity and rights

Scholar-philosopher-turned-director Paul B. Preciado constructs an essay film based on Virginia Woolf’s landmark queer novel, here turned into a clarion call.

Nov. 17, 2023

Beginning with an impulse to write an imaginary letter to the “Mrs. Dalloway” author herself, Preciado is the first to admit that he is no Woolf expert. Growing up in conservative post-Francoist Spain in the 1970s, he first encountered “Orlando” at school as a teenager. Accepting the novel’s full title as fact, he picked up the book believing it to be an actual biography.

“I was living in a society where nothing around me would allow me to think a life as a nonbinary person or as a trans person was possible,” says Preciado. “Orlando” opened his eyes to the potential of an existence that wasn’t pathologized or vilified as monstrous. “Fiction became more important to me than reality at that point.”

Preciado’s film, much like his written essays and books, is a study of fiction — both its radical possibilities, as well as the politicized way that certain fictions are made legitimate by society.

“For political minorities,” he says, “fiction is a methodology for survival. We can only transform political reality through fiction, [only] through a leap into fiction that change is possible.”

But just as some fictions are liberating, others are violent and oppressive when imposed onto marginalized people. For the trans and nonbinary community, this includes the languages of medical science, psychiatric discourse and legal jurisprudence around their rights and bodies. In Preciado’s view, there are certain types of political fictions that have been privileged, acknowledged and legitimized by society.

“For instance, your passport is a piece of fiction,” he says, “but it’s a fiction that has been recognized by the state. Whereas for a migrant person that might have no papers, there is no recognition possible.”

It’s a debate that presupposes a fixity, using language long-weaponized by conservative and far-right voices, that many are now challenging and rejecting. “It seems that we have to answer their questions constantly,” says Preciado. “And no matter how brave you are, it’s still answering questions within this very normative frame.”

It was by working through the lens of Woolf’s “Orlando” that Preciado was able to break away from this normative language and invent something new. His film, he says, builds a “poetic wall” against a constant onslaught of snubs big and small.

“Orlando, My Political Biography” also captures joy and optimism. The film ends by imagining a near-future moment when a judge (portrayed by Despentes) grants all of the Orlandos full recognition and status, complete with official documents.

For Preciado, filming that final scene was “unforgettable,” he says. As he was developing the material with his Orlandos, he realized that having papers was a key issue for many of them. It affected everything from whether they could have bank accounts to whether they could even attend school.

“Socially and legally, you’re dead — you don’t exist,” says Preciado of those without official documents that recognize identity. As a first-time filmmaker, he was not always certain that he was getting the shots he needed. But he says he knew he was capturing something special when he was filming that scene.

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Seeing the audiences’ reception to his film has been healing for Preciado. Making a movie has been a way for him to connect with people who might not traditionally pick up dense philosophy books, including his parents. He brought them to a screening of “Orlando” at the San Sebastian Film Festival.

“My father ended up crying at the end of the film,” says Preciado. “I think that that was the first time that I saw my father, who is now a 92-year-old man from Spain and very Catholic, crying and telling me that he finally understood what I’m fighting for.”

Preciado has also been moved by the broader response to his film, which he feels is creating a safe space to “think together differently,” he says.

“Seeing a very mixed audience — people from many different backgrounds, queer, nonqueer, binary, nonbinary, everything — feeling part of the same history and sharing something together, is so beautiful,” he says. “And so necessary these days.”

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Joe Flaherty, ‘SCTV’ and ‘Freaks and Geeks’ Actor, Dies at 82

Mr. Flaherty first became known for playing a series of oddball characters on one of TV’s most influential sketch shows. He was later a familiar face in film and on TV.

By Amanda Holpuch

Joe Flaherty, the comedic actor best known for his work on the influential sketch comedy series “SCTV” and as a father on the short-lived NBC ensemble series “Freaks and Geeks,” died on Monday. He was 82.

His death was confirmed by his daughter, Gudrun Flaherty, who said that he died after a “brief illness.” She did not specify a cause or say where he died.

Mr. Flaherty played a variety of characters on “SCTV” as part of an ensemble that over the years included John Candy, Martin Short, Rick Moranis, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas and Harold Ramis. The concept of the series, which aired in the 1970s and ’80s, was that its sketches were shows, or previews of shows, on a low-rent TV station in a fictional town called Melonville.

Among Mr. Flaherty’s characters were Guy Caballero, the sleazy president of the station, and Sammy Maudlin, an unctuous late-night talk show host. His character Count Floyd wore a cheap vampire costume while hosting a horror movie show, “Monster Chiller Horror Theater.” The joke was that the movies the program showed — for example, “ Dr. Tongue’s Evil House of Pancakes ” — were seldom very scary, leaving Floyd holding the bag and often having to apologize to viewers.

Gudrun Flaherty said in a statement that her father had an “unwavering passion for movies from the ’40s and ’50s,” which influenced his comedy, including his time on “SCTV.”

Mr. Flaherty was also known for roles on television shows and in films that were cherished by fans.

He played Harold Weir, the no-nonsense father of two awkward teenagers, on the cult television series “Freaks and Geeks,” which premiered in 1999 and ran for only one season, but helped launch the careers of several young actors, including James Franco, Seth Rogen, Busy Philipps, Jason Segel and Linda Cardellini.

In the 1996 film “Happy Gilmore,” Mr. Flaherty had a small but memorable role as a man who taunts the title character, a golfer played by Adam Sandler, from the crowd.

Joseph O’Flaherty was born on June 21, 1941, in Pittsburgh, the eldest of seven children, according to a 2004 profile in The Globe and Mail . His father was a production clerk at Westinghouse Electric, and the family struggled financially. “I still remember nuns from the church bringing us food,” he said.

After graduating from Central Catholic High School, he joined the Air Force at 17. He had taken a class at Pittsburgh Playhouse before enlisting, and after leaving the Air Force, he returned to the theater to take more classes, he told WESA Pittsburgh , the city’s NPR station, in 2016.

His focus was drama, but he got a taste for the comedy life while playing George in a scene from “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in front of a small audience that laughed at his line readings.

“I was kind of thrown aback because I thought: Hey, what are they laughing at? This is a drama,” Mr. Flaherty told WESA. “But the lines were actually funny, and I enjoyed that. I enjoyed getting laughter from the audience.”

He continued to study dramatic acting, but he felt the pull of comedy as he looked for work as an actor. That search took him to Chicago and the Second City, the improvisational comedy theater, which he said was where he fell in love with comedy.

“From that point on, it was all comedy,” he told WESA.

Mr. Flaherty — he told The Globe and Mail that he changed his surname to avoid confusion with a Joseph O’Flaherty who was already in Actors’ Equity — was with the Second City in Chicago for seven years before moving to Toronto to help start a branch of the troupe there.

“SCTV,” short for Second City Television, emerged as an offshoot of the Toronto troupe in 1976. The show was first seen on the Global Television Network in Toronto, then on the CBC, and later on NBC and, briefly Cinemax in the United States. It won the Emmy Award in 1982 and 1983 for outstanding writing for a variety or music program.

After “SCTV” ended in 1984, Mr. Flaherty maintained ties to Canada, dividing his time between Toronto and Los Angeles. After “Freaks and Geeks” was canceled, he accepted an invitation to become an artist in residence at Humber College in Toronto.

He also worked steadily on television and in films.

In “ Back to the Future Part II ” (1989), he was the Western Union man who delivered a message to Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) after it had sat in the Western Union office for 70 years. He reprised the role in 2010 in an episode of the animated series “Family Guy.”

In addition to his daughter, Mr. Flaherty’s survivors include a son, Gabe. Complete information on his survivors was not immediately available.

Reflecting on the legacy of “SCTV” two decades after its last episode aired, Mr. Flaherty told The Globe and Mail that key to the show’s success was that the troupe’s members, several of whom would go on to successful film and television careers, had worked together extensively onstage.

“If we had done it like an American network, they’d have done auditions for cast members,” he said. “They would have picked people out that did good auditions, and then put them together as a group to see if they could find a chemistry. Well, we really had a chemistry. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts.”

Victor Mather contributed reporting, and Kirsten Noyes contributed research.

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of a member of the cast of “Freaks and Geeks.” She is Busy Philipps, not Phillips.

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Amanda Holpuch covers breaking news and other topics. More about Amanda Holpuch