Clare Higgins gives difficult women enough human feeling to hold our attention, even in films that cannot hold together. We value the seriousness she brings to lurid material, though her screen roles only partly explain her reputation.
Fi1m perspective
In Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), Clare Higgins takes Julia Cotton seriously while the film piles on the gore. She gives this ruthless woman a recognisable human presence, keeping us interested when the plot has become difficult to follow. We enjoyed Higgins even as the sequel wore us down, because she gave us a person to watch amid the increasingly tiresome grotesquerie. Her performance is the strongest reason to sit through a poor film. It also shows a useful quality in an actor working in horror: she can commit to the material without making it solemn.
Julia had been her film breakthrough in Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (1987), and remains the screen part most closely associated with her. The ambitious, ruthless character fits a career in which complicated women have often given her substantial work. Through the 1990s and 2000s, she sustained a theatre career that included Alexandra del Lago in Sweet Bird of Youth (1995), Ursula Loyer in Vincent in Brixton (2003) and the title role in Hecuba (2005). Her reputation on stage rests particularly on emotionally demanding tragic and classical roles. An account confined to horror would leave out much of what she does.
Later screen work has often called on her authority, including Miss Cackle in The Worst Witch (2017–2020). Mad Hettie in The Sandman (2022) belongs to a continuing career of supporting film roles and recurring or guest television appearances alongside theatre. Higgins has described screen work as less fulfilling than the stage, citing its unnatural timing and the lack of a live audience’s energy. That preference is worth knowing, though nothing in her commitment to Julia suggests she regards the screen as an excuse to do less.
The limit is what that commitment can repair. Tony Randel’s direction of Hellbound: Hellraiser II favours extravagant action and expanding mythology, leaving Higgins to keep Julia interesting while the film struggles to connect its human and supernatural figures. She succeeds at that, but cannot make the confused storytelling frightening. Taking the character seriously gives us something to follow through the muddle; it does not remove the muddle. We would not endure the sequel solely for her.
Biography
Clare Higgins is an English actress. She was born Clare Frances Elizabeth Higgins on 10 November 1955 in Bradford, Yorkshire, and trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
She is a three-time winner of the Olivier Award for Best Actress, for Sweet Bird of Youth (1995), Vincent in Brixton (2003) and Hecuba (2005). She made her Broadway debut in Vincent in Brixton and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play.
Higgins is known to film audiences for her role as Julia Cotton in Hellraiser (1987) and its sequel Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988). Her other screen credits include The Golden Compass (2007), Downton Abbey (2010), Ready Player One (2018) and the television series Doctor Who and The Sandman.
