Award-winning British actress Joan Plowright, widow of Laurence Olivier, dies aged 95

Joan Plowright, an award-winning British actress and widow of Laurence Olivier, has died. She was 95.

“She enjoyed a long and illustrious career spanning seven decades in theatre, film and television until blindness forced her to retire,” Plowright’s family said in a statement.

The Tony Award-winning actress died Thursday at Denville Hall, a nursing home for actors in southern England. Plowright was surrounded by loved ones at the time of her death.

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“We are so proud of everything Joan did and who she was as a loving and deeply inclusive person.”

Part of an astonishing generation of British actors, including Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Eileen Atkins and Maggie Smith, Plowright won a Tony Award, two Golden Globes and nominations for an Oscar and an Emmy. She was made a lady by Queen Elizabeth II in 2004.

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Plowright and her late husband, Olivier, made an impact on Britain’s theater scene in the decades after the Second World War.

The British actress was born Joan Ann Plowright in Brigg, Lincolnshire, England. She started gracing the stage at the age of 3 when her mother ran a drama group.

Plowright spent school holidays at summer sessions at the university’s drama schools. After high school she studied at the Laban Art of Movement Studio in Manchester, after which she won a two-year scholarship to the drama school at the Old Vic Theater in London.

In 1954 she made her stage debut in London and joined the Royal Court Theater two years later. Plowright gained recognition in dramas written by John Osborne. She worked with actors including Albert Finney, Alan Bates and Anthony Hopkins.

Plowright made his feature film debut with an uncredited turn in American director John Huston’s epic adaptation of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” in 1956, starring Gregory Peck as the possessed Captain Ahab.

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A year later she starred with her future husband Olivier in the original London production of Osborne’s “The Entertainer”. She played Olivier’s daughter in the play, and the two were reunited for the 1960 film adaptation.

In 1961, Plowright and Olivier were married in Connecticut while both were starring on Broadway – he in “Becket” and she in “A Taste of Honey,” for which she won a Tony.

“I sometimes feel such a serenity come over me when I think of you, or write to you—a gentle tenderness and serenity. A feeling devoid of all violence, passion, or crushing longing… it makes me go out on the streets with a smile on my face and in my heart to everyone,” Olivier wrote in a love letter to Plowright.

Olivier died in 1989 at the age of 82. After his death, Plowright had a resurgence of acting career at the age of 60.

In 1993, Plowright became one of only a handful of actors to win two Golden Globes in the same year. She won the supporting TV award for “Stalin” and the supporting film award for “Enchanted April”.

With dozens of film credits to her name, she appeared in films such as “Dennis the Menace”, “The Spiderwick Chronicles” and “The Scarlet Letter”.

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Plowright is survived by his three children – Tamsin, Richard and Julie-Kate, who are all actors, and several grandchildren.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.