Acting roles come full circle

She first saw the play as a child, when her famous father adapted it from a Henry James novella and played the male lead. Decades later, Vanessa Redgrave acted the role of Miss Tina on stage.

Now she is playing the forbidding grande dame Juliana Bordereau in a movie version of "The Aspern Papers" with her daughter Joely Richardson cast in the younger woman's role.

Redgrave, at 81, still radiates the outspoken intelligence that has characterized her film and stage work.

It is the fourth time the two have paired, a sequence that includes Redgrave joining her daughter on the popular TV series "Nip/Tuck" in a number of episodes.

Richardson worried that her mother might not cope well with the demands of weekly television.

Her mom thrived.