Joan Plowright, Tony winner and British acting legend, dies at 95 | Broadway Buzz

Joan Plowright, circa 1955
(Photo c/o Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)

Joan Plowright, a veteran actress who won a Tony Award, two Golden Globes and nominations for an Oscar and an Emmy, died on January 16. In a statement, her family said Plowright died at Denville Hall, a nursing home. for actors in Northwood, England. She was 95.

Plowright is among the most famous and significant English actresses of the modern era. From 1948 to 1990, she appeared in more than 50 English stage productions at the Old Vic Theater and in productions by the National Theatre, with which she became closely associated after marrying the legendary actor Laurence Olivier in 1961.

Plowright appeared in many roles on film, esp Moby Dick (1956), The entertainer (1960), Three sisters (1974), Enchanted April (1991), for which she won a Golden Globe and earned an Academy Award nomination, Dennis the Menace (1993) and Tea with Mussolini (1999). On television, she received a Golden Globe and Emmy Award nomination for the HBO film Stalin (1992).

Plowright made her Broadway debut in a double bill of the 1958 Eugène Ionesco play, as a decrepit old lady in The chairs and a schoolgirl in The lesson. Later that year, she played alongside Olivier in the entertainer, transferring the play from London to Broadway (later starring in the film adaptation) and achieving great acclaim. “Joan Plowright’s bright attentiveness in the secondary part of a girl who spends most of her time listening (is an) enlightening and careful characterization that looks effortless on stage.” wrote New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson in his review of that production.

On Broadway, Plowright’s crowning achievement was her starring role in Shelagh Delaney’s play A taste of honey (1960) opposite Angela Lansbury. Plowright played Josephine, a teenage girl who falls in love with a black sailor, conceives a child and is abandoned. Lansbury played her mother. “The treasure of the evening is the haunting performance of Joan Plowright,” wrote Howard Taubman in his New York Times review. “Through voice, accent and movement, she captures the shell of cynicism the girl has grown into to protect herself from hopelessness,” he wrote. “Miss Plowright gives the play its affecting core.” That year, Plowright took home a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She appeared on Broadway again, in Filumena (1980).

At the time, Plowright won her Tony, she had already established herself on the English stage. Born in England in 1929, Plowright began spending summers at drama school aged around 14 or 15, won a scholarship to the Old Vic School, trained extensively in productions of Chekhov and Shakespeare, and became a dedicated student of Stanislavski and “the Method”. ” She later trained at the Arts Council Repertory, where she appeared in early productions of Tennessee Williams’ glass menagerie, and joined the English Stage Company, where she excelled in roles in The Crucible and The countrywoman. In 1960 she appeared in 21 major English productions; throughout that decade she would appear in 15 more significant London shows, many of which were performed at the Old Vic.

When A taste of honey came to Broadway in 1960, Plowright was already a world-renowned stage actress. “Joan Plowright, whose performance in A taste of honey have showered her with critical applause, is not likely to be made either lazy by success or compliant by flattery.” wrote Murray Schumach in 1960 New York Times article, writing of Plowright’s notoriously outspoken nature. “For Miss Plowright, this side of 30, has earned the court and learned the way to speak her mind through fourteen years of acting,” he wrote.

In that article, Plowright provided an admirable and meaningful defense of the theater. “I don’t have to,” she said, “do anything I don’t want to. A few years ago I was asked to sign a seven-year film contract. I didn’t want it, because it would have kept me off the stage.”

She published her memoirs, And that’s not allin 2001, and was appointed a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2004. She officially retired from acting in 2014 after losing her sight to macular degeneration.

Plowright is survived by his three children: Tamsin, Richard and Julie-Kate, and several grandchildren.