Thelma Holt CBE trained as an actress at RADA and pursued a successful career as an actress before co-founding the pioneer UK fringe theatre, The Open Space Theatre, with Charles Marowitz. She subsequently became a Director of the Round House. In 1985 she joined the Royal National Theatre to produce two international seasons in 1987 and 1989 for which she received the Laurence Olivier/Observer Award for Outstanding Achievement.

In 1989 as Executive Producer for the Peter Hall Company she produced Orpheus Descending with Vanessa Redgrave and The Merchant of Venice with Dustin Hoffman. She formed Thelma Holt Limited in 1990 and her many plays include: Three Sisters with Vanessa and  Lynn Redgrave, Hamlet with Alan Rickman and A Doll’s House with Janet McTeer. Following the successful West End run of A Doll’s House, she co-produced the play with Bill Kenwright on Broadway where it won four Tony Awards.

Her long collaboration with the Japanese director Yukio Ninagawa still continues and 2000 she co-produced King Lear with the RSC and the Sainokuni Shakespeare Company with Nigel Hawthorne in the title role.

Thelma Holt was awarded a CBE in 1994 in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List. In 1998 she was the Cameron Mackintosh Professor of Contemporary Drama at Oxford University and is a Fellow of St. Catherine’s College, Oxford.