She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning both the Tony and Olivier Awards. On screen, she has starred in more than 80 films; including Mary, Queen of Scots, Isadora, Julia, The Bostonians, Mission: Impossible and Atonement. Redgrave was proclaimed by Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams to be "the greatest living actress of our times" and she remains the only British actress to ever have won the Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Cannes, Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild awards. She was also the recipient of the 2010 BAFTA Fellowship "in recognition of an outstanding and exceptional contribution to film."

A member of the Redgrave family of actors, she is the daughter of Sir Michael Redgrave, sister of the late Lynn Redgrave and the late Corin Redgrave, and the mother of Hollywood actresses Joely Richardson and the late Natasha Richardson.

Redgrave was born in Greenwich, London, the daughter of actors Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson. Laurence Olivier announced her birth to the audience at a performance of Hamlet at the Old Vic, when he said that Laertes (played by Sir Michael) had a daughter. She was educated at The Alice Ottley School, Worcester & Queen's Gate School, London before "coming out" as a debutante. Her late siblings, Lynn Redgrave and the equally outspoken Corin Redgrave were also acclaimed actors.

Redgrave's daughters, Natasha Richardson (1963–2009) and Joely Richardson (b. 1965) from her 1962–67 marriage to film director Tony Richardson, also built respected acting careers. Redgrave's son Carlo Gabriel Nero (né Carlo Sparanero), by Italian actor Franco Nero (né Francesco Sparanero), is a writer and film director. She met Franco while filming Camelot in 1967, the year in which she divorced her husband Tony Richardson, who left her for the French actress Jeanne Moreau. Redgrave and Nero married on 31 December 2006. She is also the grandmother of Michaél and Daniel Neeson, Daisy Bevan, and Raphael and Lilli Sparanero.

In 1967, Redgrave was made a Commander (CBE) of the Order of the British Empire. It was reported that she declined a damehood in 1999.

From 1971 to 1986, she had a long-term relationship with actor Timothy Dalton, with whom she had starred in the film Mary, Queen of Scots.[citation needed]

Natasha Richardson died on 18 March 2009 from a traumatic brain injury caused by a skiing accident . On 6 April 2010, her brother Corin Redgrave died at age 70 in a South London hospital after an undisclosed illness; he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2000. On 2 May 2010, her younger sister Lynn died of breast cancer.

Vanessa Redgrave entered the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1954. She first appeared in the West End, playing opposite her brother, in 1958.

In 1960, Redgrave had her first starring role in Robert Bolt's The Tiger and the Horse, in which she co-starred with her father. In 1962 she played Imogen in William Gaskill's production of Cymbeline for the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1966 Redgrave created the role of Jean Brodie in the Donald Albery production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, adapted for the stage by Jay Presson Allen from the novel by Muriel Spark. She won four Evening Standard Awards Best Actress Evening Standards Awards for Best Actress in four decades. She was awarded the Laurence Olivier Award for Actress of the Year in a Revival in 1984 for The Aspern Papers

In the nineties, her theatre work included Prospero in The Tempest at Shakespeare's Globe in London. In 2003 she won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance in the Broadway revival of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night. In January 2006, Redgrave was presented the Ibsen Centennial Award for her "outstanding work in interpreting many of Henrik Ibsen's works over the last decades." Previous recipients of the award include Liv Ullmann, Glenda Jackson, and Claire Bloom.