Acting star whose first love was theatre

Joan Plowright who has died aged 95was one of Britain’s finest stage actresses – and later found fame on the big screen, although she largely preferred stage work.

The Tony and Golden Globe-winning actress once said that movies were a fallback to paying the bills, saying, “You make movies if the roof needs fixing.”

Theater audiences enjoyed her versatility and good humor, and her Tony-winning 1961 Broadway role A Taste of Honey saw her play a troubled teenager with Angela Lansbury as her mother.

Other notable stage roles include Saint Joan in 1963 and Saturday, Sunday, Monday a decade later, along with films including 1992’s Enchanted April and 1999’s Tea with Mussolini.

She was also married to the great actor Sir Laurence Olivier for 28 years until his death in 1989.

After he died, Plowright continued to act into her 80s until failing eyesight forced her into retirement.

Joan Ann Plowright was born on 29 October 1929 in Brigg, Lincolnshire.

Her mother, Daisy, was a keen amateur actress and by the age of three her daughter had taken to the stage.

She attended Scunthorpe Grammar School before studying drama at the Bristol Old Vic.

Her mother encouraged her choice of career, albeit with brutal openness.

“You’re no oil painting,” said Daisy, “but you’ve got the spark. Just thank God you’ve got my legs, and not your father’s.”

She made her stage debut as a professional actress in Croydon in 1948 and by 1956 had joined the Royal Court Theater in London.

At the time, the Royal Court was a hotbed for new talent specializing in controversial works. It was also the spiritual birthplace of the kitchen sink drama.

Plowright gained recognition in a series of productions written by this group of angry young men, in roles that relied on acting ability rather than mere glamour.

The daughter of a newspaper editor in Lincolnshire, she was far from working class – but her down-to-earth and emotional honesty helped bring British theater up to date.

In 1957 she starred alongside Sir Laurence Olivier in a production of John Osborne’s play The Entertainer.

Olivier, who played Archie Rice, was at the peak of his acting career and considered something of a matinee idol.

Plowright played his daughter, and the actors’ mutual respect led to romance. “Nothing is sexier in a man than talent,” she noted.

She was initially wary of a relationship with him – Olivier was 22 years older and already half of Britain’s most famous theater couple, married to Vivien Leigh.

Plowright was herself married to fellow actor Roger Gage.

But Leigh, Sir Lawrence’s second wife, who suffered from mental illness, divorced Olivier in 1960.

Plowright and her husband divorced the same year.

A year later, Olivier married Plowright in Connecticut – around the same time she won a Tony Award on Broadway for her role in A Taste of Honey.

The pair soon appeared together in a number of plays in Chichester, UK, including a notable staging of Uncle Vanya.

The Guardian’s Michael Billington called it “one of the great Chekhov experiences of the 20th century … that brought tears to my eyes”.

They had three children, but their marriage was not without difficulties.

“He has extreme behavior, as you understand,” she said later. “You just find a way not to be swept overboard by his demons.”

Their relationship also led to her refusing for five years to perform at the National Theatre, where her husband was director from 1962-1973.

The actress felt she would have been vulnerable to accusations of favoritism.

Eventually, however, she took a contract with the theater for a decade, in much larger roles than those at the royal court.

Now her husband had been elevated to the peerage – making her Lady Olivier – but she did not use the title.

Plowright won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the 1992 film Enchanted April.

In fact, she won two Golden Globes in one year – the other coming for the HBO TV movie Stalin.

Her other films included Three Sisters in 1970 and The Merchant of Venice in 1973 – both opposite her husband and both based on National Theater productions.

She also played Mrs Fairfax in 1996’s Jane Eyre, and her range went far beyond the classics in films such as Dennis the Menace, Last Action Hero and 101 Dalmatians.

As Lord Olivier’s health declined, his wife accepted her first big screen role in the 1990 black comedy I Love You to Death with Kevin Kline and Tracey Ullman.

In 1989, Lord Olivier died of kidney failure, aged 82.

A decade later, the actress gained recognition in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1999 autobiographical film Tea with Mussolini alongside her close friends, Judi Dench and Maggie Smith.

Dame Joan found work a great solace after her husband’s death, appearing in a dozen films between 2000 and 2010.

They included 2003’s I Am David, about a boy who escapes a gulag in Bulgaria, and the comedy Bringing Down the House, starring Steve Martin, from the same year.

However, she clearly saw the screen as a poor cousin to the theatre.

“You can’t pretend that most movie dialogues are that challenging,” she said. “You make movies if the roof needs to be repaired.”

As if to agree, the theater in her native Scunthorpe renamed itself in her honour.

Her biggest obstacle to more theater work was her eyesight, she had macular degeneration, which made the stage increasingly difficult.

In 2014, blindness forced her back from all forms of acting.

Four years later she appeared with three old friends – Maggie Smith, Eileen Atkins and Judi Dench – in a BBC Arena film, Nothing like a lady.

The grandes dames of British theater recalled their lives and careers with searing honesty and humility.

Filmed in the garden of the home she had shared with Olivier, Plowright spoke candidly about how she had tried to avoid playing Cleopatra at the National Theater as she felt she would be mocked for her lack of beauty.

“They all assume we think we’re the bee’s knees,” she admitted. “They don’t realize we’re shaking inside.”