Bio
Lindsay Duncan is a Scottish actress best known for her role as Servilia of the Junii in the HBO/BBC drama series Rome, from 2005-2007.
She is a noted stage actress, winning the Tony Award for Private Lives.
Duncan was born in Edinburgh, Scotland to a father who served in the army for 21 years.
She studied at London's Central School of Speech and Drama and worked in mostly unheralded theatre roles before graduating to television productions in the 1980s.
These productions included On Approval (1982), Reilly, Ace of Spies (1983), Dead Head (1985), and Traffik (1989).
On stage she created the role of La Marquise de Merteuil in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses in Stratford, London and New York.
In the 1990s, she continued to appear in prestigious London stage and screen productions, such as the 1999 TV version of Oliver Twist, in which she portrays Elizabeth Leeford.
Duncan also appears in the 1999 film adaptation of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (in dual roles as the heroine's mother and drug-addicted aunt), in the 1997 television series A History of Tom Jones: A Foundling as Lady Ballaston, in the 1996 film adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream as Hippolyta and Titania, and in the 1993 TV serial A Year in Provence, as the wife of author Peter Mayle.
She played the role of Katherine in the feature film Under the Tuscan Sun in 2003.
She played Servilia of the Junii in the HBO/BBC collaborative series Rome from 2005-2007. The mother of Marcus Junius Brutus, lover of the married Julius Caesar and enemy of Atia of the Julii, Servilia is depicted as a sophisticated and regal Roman matron who follows her heart to her detriment.
Betrayed by love and hungering for revenge, she slowly becomes as cruel as those she would destroy.
Servilia is loosely based on the historical personage of Servilia Caepionis, mother of Marcus Junius Brutus, and famous lover of Julius Caesar.
Duncan starred as Rose Harbinson in Starter for Ten (2006). Aged by make-up, she played Lord Longford's wife, Elizabeth, in the award-winning TV film Longford, also in 2006.
In 2007 she played the role of Janet Pretorius in the contemporary retelling of Frankenstein which aired as a made-for-TV movie on ITV in the UK in October.
In 2008 she will star in the mini-series Lost in Austen, in the role of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. She will also play the role of The Ice Queen in the feature film Burlesque Fairytales.
Duncan is married to the British actor Hilton McRae. They have one son, Cal McRae, born September 1991.