More than once Natasha Richardson said that she moved to America to escape the “baggage of family” that had always dogged her in her home country.

Nearly two decades have passed since she left for New York, but the public fascination with her relatives shows no sign of cooling: the Redgraves are the most extraordinary stage and screen dynasty that there has ever been.

The lineage stretches back at least five generations, through her mother, Vanessa, one of very few actors to win an Oscar, a Golden Globe, an Emmy, a Tony and an Olivier, via her grandfather, Sir Michael, to his father, Roy, who became a star of silent films in Australia and died in poverty, to her great-great-great-grandfather Cornelius Redgrave, a ticket salesman and racketeer in the theatre district around Drury Lane.

Sir Michael was the first Redgrave with a claim to greatness, with more than 50 screen roles including The Dam Busters. Vanessa’s birth was announced by Olivier from the stage of the Old Vic in 1937. In 1962 she married Tony Richardson and they had two children, Natasha and Joely.

Natasha and Vanessa appeared together in January in a charity performance of A Little Night Music. Last night Corin, whose own daughter Jemma is yet another acting Redgrave, was on stage at the Jermyn Street theatre in Central London. The show went on, as it always has for the Redgraves throughout a tumultuous century and a half of life in the public eye.

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