Glenda Jackson

Jackson won two Academy Awards for best actress, for Women in Love and A Touch of Class, before giving up acting to become Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate in 1992. She served as a transport minister and was a sharp critic of the Iraq war and, memorably, of Margaret Thatcher in her 2013 tribute debate. The transfer from stage to Commons was real rather than celebrity tokenism: she sat for 23 years, then returned to acting and won a Tony in her eighties.