Tyzack was noted for her classical stage roles, having joined the
Royal Shakespeare Company to play Vassilissa in
Maxim Gorky's
The Lower Depths in 1962, and had major roles in their 1972 Roman Season as Volumnia in
Coriolanus, Portia in
Julius Caesar and Tamora in
Titus Andronicus. She appeared in another Gorky play, as Maria Lvovna in
Summerfolk RSC 1974. In 1977 she joined the acting company of the
Stratford Festival in
Canada, where she played Mrs Alving in Ibsen's
Ghosts, Queen Margaret in
Richard III and the Countess of Roussillon in ''
All's Well That Ends Well''. In a feature of Stratford's 1977 season,
New York Times writer
Richard Eder noted "One of the main excitements was the discovery of Margaret Tyzack [...] her work here has been a revelation". Tyzack had been engaged on short notice by the Festival when Canadian actress
Kate Reid dropped out, which initially spurred some protests from Canadian nationalists. Theatre critic Robert Cushman later wrote that had the protests succeeded "Canadian audiences would have been deprived of three great performances", noting of her performance in
Richard III, "there can never have been a better
(Queen) Margaret". She played the Countess role again for the Royal Shakespeare Company on Broadway in 1983. She received her first Olivier award as
Actress of the Year in a Revival in 1981 for the
National Theatre revival of ''
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in which she played Martha, replacing Joan Plowright who was ill. In 1990, she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her role as Lotte Schoen in the play Lettice and Lovage, in which she appeared in both the London and Broadway productions opposite Dame Maggie Smith. In 1994, she played Sybil Birling in the Royal National Theatre production of An Inspector Calls''. In 2008, she was acclaimed for her portrayal of Mrs St Maugham in a revival of
Enid Bagnold's
The Chalk Garden at the
Donmar Warehouse, London, for which she won the Best Actress award in the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and the Olivier award for
Best Actress in a Play in 2009. In 2009, she also appeared alongside
Helen Mirren in
Phedre at the Royal National Theatre. She appeared in two films directed by
Stanley Kubrick,
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and
A Clockwork Orange (1971). Tyzack also appeared in
Ring of Spies (1964),
The Whisperers (1967),
A Touch of Love (1969),
The Legacy (1978),
The Quatermass Conclusion (1979),
Mr. Love (1985),
Prick Up Your Ears (1987), ''
The King's Whore (1990), Mrs Dalloway (1997), Bright Young Things (2003), and the Woody Allen films Match Point (2005) and Scoop (2006). Tyzack played Queen Anne in The First Churchills; Bette in Cousin Bette; and Antonia, mother of the Emperor Claudius, in I, Claudius. She also played Clotilde Bradbury-Scott in the BBC adaptation of the Agatha Christie story Nemesis'' in 1987 in
Miss Marple. In the 1990s, she played a major role in
George Lucas's
Young Indiana Jones television series as the young
Indiana Jones' strict
Oxford-educated tutor,
Miss Helen Seymour. In the 2000s, she made two appearances in
Midsomer Murders. In 2011, she joined the cast of soap opera
EastEnders, playing
Lydia Simmonds. On 13 April 2011, it was announced that for personal reasons she had departed
EastEnders and that her role had been recast to
Heather Chasen as a result of the nature of the large storyline needing to continue. ==Honours==