Brenda Blethyn

Born in Ramsgate, Kent, Blethyn was the youngest of nine children in a Roman Catholic, working-class family. Her mother, Louisa Kathleen (née Supple; 10 May 1904 – 21 June 1992), was a housewife and former maid who had met Blethyn's father, William Charles Bottle (5 March 1894 – 9 January 1985) in approximately 1922 while working for the same household in Broadstairs, Kent. Bottle had previously worked as a shepherd, and spent six years in British India with the Royal Field Artillery immediately prior to returning home to Broadstairs to become the family's chauffeur. Before WWII, he found work as a mechanic at the Vauxhall car factory in Luton, Bedfordshire.

The family lived in poor circumstances at their maternal grandmother's home. In 1944, after an engagement of 20 years and the births of eight children, the couple wed and moved into a small rented house in Ramsgate. By the time Blethyn was born in 1946, her three eldest siblings—Pam, Ted, and Bernard—had already left home. Her parents introduced Blethyn to film, taking her to the cinema weekly.

Blethyn trained at technical college and worked as a stenographer and bookkeeper for a bank as a young adult. Towards the end of her first marriage, she opted to turn her hobby of amateur dramatics to her professional advantage. After studying at the Guildford School of Acting, she went onto the London stage in 1976, performing several seasons at the Royal National Theatre. In the following three years, she participated in Troilus and Cressida, Tamburlaine the Great, The Fruits of Enlightenment opposite Sir Ralph Richardson, Bedroom Farce, The Passion, and Strife.