Actor Joan Plowright, known for her long career in theater and film, has died at the age of 95, her family has announced.

Plowright won acclaim in her early years performing at the Royal Court Theater and the National Theatre, then based at the Old Vic and led by her second husband Laurence Olivier.

A statement from her family said: “It is with great sadness that the family of Joan Plowright, Mrs Olivier, inform you that she passed away peacefully, surrounded by her family, at Danville Hall on January 16, 2025, aged 95.

“She enjoyed a long and illustrious career in theatre, film and television for seventy years until blindness forced her into retirement.

"She cherished her last ten years in Sussex, filled with constant visits from friends and family, filled with laughter and wonderful memories. The family is deeply grateful to Gene Wilson and all those involved in her personal care over the years."

She appeared with Olivier in John Osborne's The Entertainer in the West End and Broadway, and starred in the screen version. At the National Theatre, she played Portia in Olivier's Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, as well as Martha in The Three Sisters, Sonia in Uncle Vanya and George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan The heroine of the same name.

Plowright was born in Brigg, Lincolnshire, on 28 October 1929, and attended Scunthorpe Grammar School on a scholarship. She was the second of three children of Daisy Margaret Burton and William Ernest Plowright. Her mother was an amateur actress and opera singer who taught dance. Her father was a journalist with a passion for am-dram. She always wanted to be an actress and at the age of 15 won a drama trophy at a local theater festival. After leaving school at 17, she worked briefly as a substitute teacher before training at the Old Vic drama school in London.

After appearing in late-night revues in London, she made her stage debut in a show called If Four Walls Told in Croydon in 1948, before joining the Old Vic where she met the cast Roger Gage, whom he later married. She auditioned unsuccessfully to play Bianca in Orson Welles's stage play Othello. Welles remembered her and cast Plowright as cabin boy Pip in the 1955 West End version of Moby-Dick.

The following year she came to George Devine's British Stage Company and, as she wrote in her memoir That's Not All, "felt completely at home in the theater for the first time." "I came into contact with people who cared as much as I did about creating a theater that was relevant to the 20th century. I found my own voice as an actor, and an exciting sense of purpose." William Wycherley's The Country Housewife is She first found success at Court, and over the years she starred in a variety of plays, including Arnold Wesker's Roots, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara (in the title role) and Ionescu's "The Crucible". Both The Chair and The Lesson transferred to the Phoenix Theater in New York, where her co-star in The Chair was Eli Wallach.

When John Osborne's royal court drama The Entertainer moved to London's West End in 1957, Plowright succeeded Dorothy Tutin. The show introduced her to Olivier, who played faded music hall star Archie Rice, her character's father. He was so impressed by Plowright's performance on "The Country Housewife" that he jokingly renamed her "Miss Wheelshare." "The Entertainer" was also made into a film, with Plowright later choosing Olivier to sing "Why Should I Care?" 》recording. As Archie Rice, one of her songs from Desert Island Discs. She went on to Broadway with the show and later won a Tony Award as the pregnant teenager Jo, with Angela Lansbury as her mother, in Sierra Delaney's A Taste of Honey.

In 1960, Olivier and Plowright starred in Orson Welles's Royal Court stage production of The Rhinoceros of Ionesco. That year, Plowright and Gage divorced. Plowright married Olivier in 1961, following continued media coverage of their relationship and the end of his marriage to Vivien Leigh.

During Olivier's tenure as director of the National Theatre, Plowright's roles included Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing and Hilda Wanger in The Master Builder. In 1973, when Franco Zeffirelli directed Eduardo de Filippo’s family drama Saturday, Sunday, Monday, she told the Observer Newspaper: "I got to make the stew live on stage. During intermission, the delicious smells made people look happy but hungry, and sandwich sales skyrocketed." Zeffirelli 1977 In 2003, he directed De Filippo's "Filumena Marturano" again, and in 2003, he again directed Pirandello's adaptation of "Absolute!" ” (maybe), both in London.

In 1988 Plowright directed Married Love, a play about Mary Stopes, and in 1990 she starred in "Time and Conway," directed by her son Richard Olivier. By then her film career had gathered pace. In Peter Greenaway's Overwhelmed by Numbers, she played the mother of Joely Richardson and Juliet Stevenson. She subsequently had roles in the offbeat comedy I Love You to Death, an adaptation of Beryl Bainbridge's The Dressmaker, and Enchanted April, set in Portofi on the Italian Riviera Nod filmed it and was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as the domineering widow. The hit film Tea with Mussolini brought her back to Italy and back to Zeffirelli, starring alongside Maggie Smith and Judi Dench. She plays a surrogate mother to a boy based on Zeffirelli.

In 2013, Plowright reprized the role of Saint Joan in a speech at the National Theatre's 50th birthday celebrations. In 2018, she reminisced about her career in Roger Michell's film Nothing Like a Dame alongside Dench, Smith and Eileen Atkins.