During this period, Cusack and her husband, Jeremy Irons, appeared in a Shakespeare Winter's Eve, a major fundraiser for the Riverside Shakespeare Company in New York, along with other members of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Following the Broadway run, the plays toured the US, making stops in Washington DC and Los Angeles. Cusack's connection with the Royal Shakespeare Company continued with a series of leading roles include Portia in The Merchant of Venice opposite David Suchet, Lady Macbeth opposite Jonathan Pryce in Macbeth and Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra in Stratford-upon-Avon and at London's Haymarket Theatre in the West End.
In 1990, Cusack, in the role of Masha, joined two of her sisters, Niamh (as Irina) and Sorcha (as Olga), and her father, Cyril Cusack (as Chebutykin) for a well-received production of Anton Chekhov's tragi-comedy The Three Sisters in a new version by Frank McGuinness, directed by Adrian Noble at the Gate Theatre, Dublin before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre in London. The production also featured Niamh's husband Finbar Lynch as Solenyi and Lesley Manville as Natasha. The production won the three real-life sisters the Irish Life Award in 1992.
Cusack starred with Peter Sellers in the film Hoffman (1970). She guest starred in an episode of The Persuaders! (1971), a TV series starring Tony Curtis and Roger Moore, as Jenny Lindley, a wealthy heiress who suspects that a man claiming to be her dead brother is in fact an impostor. In 1975 she made three appearances in the TV series Quiller as the character 'Roz'.
Further starring roles include lead roles in Oliver's Travels (1995), Have Your Cake And Eat It (1997) for which she won the RTS Award for Best Actress and Frank McGuinness's The Hen House (1989) for BBC Television. She starred in the title role of George du Maurier's Trilby (1976), in an adaptation for the BBC's Play of the Month, with Alan Badel as Svengali. She also starred in the BBC mini-series North and South (2004, from the novel by Elizabeth Gaskell) as Mrs. Thornton. Cusack starred in the BBC sitcom Home Again (2006) and appeared in the TV series Camelot (2011), which ran for one season. Cusack had featured roles in the mini-series The Deep (2014) and the series Marcella (2016), an eight-episode murder mystery.
Publications
Along with other actresses, including Paola Dionisotti, Fiona Shaw, Juliet Stevenson and Harriet Walter, Cusack contributed to a book by Carol Rutter called Clamorous Voices: Shakespeare's Women Today (1994).[5] The book analysed modern acting interpretations of female Shakespearean roles.
Prior to marrying Irons, Cusack gave birth to a son in 1967 and placed the boy for adoption. In 2007, a journalist for the Irish Sunday Independent, Daniel McConnell, revealed that Cusack was the mother of left-wing general election candidate and now member of Irish parliament Richard Boyd Barrett.[6] The two have since been reunited.[7] Cusack campaigned for Boyd Barrett when he stood unsuccessfully in Ireland's 2007 general election as the People Before Profit Alliance's candidate for Dún Laoghaire constituency.[8][9] She also joined him in the count centre as he awaited the outcome of the 2011 general election, at which he was elected to Dáil Éireann.[10] In May 2013, Boyd Barrett revealed that theatre director Vincent Dowling was his biological father.[11]
Cusack had a short relationship with the footballer George Best in 1971.[12] While married to Irons, she had a long relationship with playwright Tom Stoppard but made it clear that she wanted to remain married to her husband. After her reunion with Boyd Barrett she also wanted to spend time with him in Dublin rather than with Stoppard in France where they shared a house.[13]
Cusack is a patron of the Burma Campaign UK, the London-based group campaigning for human rights and democracy in Burma.