Joan Plowright, perhaps the greatest English-language actor of the 20th century and the widow of Laurence Oliver, has died. She is 95 years old.

Plowright became an outstanding actress in her own right on stage and screen, especially in her native England, and won a Tony Award for "A Taste of Honey."

The actress retired in 2014 after losing her sight due to macular degeneration. In a statement to the Guardian, her family said: "It is with great sadness that the family of Dame Joan Plowright, Mrs Olivier, have to inform you that she passed away at Danville Hall on 16 January 2025. Passed away peacefully surrounded by his family at the age of 95 Aged seventy years, she enjoyed a long and illustrious career in theatre, film and television, until blindness forced her into retirement. She cherished her last ten years in Sussex, filled with constant visits from friends and family. and wonderful memories. The family is deeply grateful to Gene Wilson and all those involved in her personal care over the years.”

She was nominated for an Oscar in 1991 for April and won a Golden Globe for her role in Mike Newell's film about four mismatched British women living in The story of an Italian villa. The New York Times said: “Joan Plowright is highly entertaining as Mrs. Fisher, a dignified old woman who becomes Rose and Lottie’s unlikely roommate, and who brims with gusto throughout the film. The names of literary celebrities she once knew through her distinguished father were mentioned.

Plowright is no stranger to comedy: She had a stellar performance in Lawrence Kasdan's dark comedy "I Love You to Death," in which she played the mother of Tracey Ullman's character. The wife of a pizzeria owner (Kevin Kline), to whom she is unfaithful. ;Plowright's mother urges her to kill him, and hilarity ensues. Roger Ebert said: "Joan Plowright as the mother seems unlikely, but the bedside scene is the biggest laugh in the movie."

The actress also appeared in television series and was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1993 for her role in the HBO series "Stalin," starring Robert Duvall.

Although Plowright was first a member of the theater world, she made numerous appearances in feature films, including "Enchanted April" and "I Love You to Death," as well as "Tea with Mussolini," Barry Levinson's Avalon, the Irish-set comedy Widow's Peak and the recent Widow's Peak Palfrey in Claremont. "

Plowright first came to prominence among those unfamiliar with the British stage thanks to her performance in Tony Richardson's brilliant 1960 film The Entertainer, adapted from John Osborne's play, Olivier Excellent performance in a dancehall performer confronting existentialism. beat. She was nominated for a BAFTA Most Promising Newcomer Award for playing his daughter in the film, but the scandal ended his romance after the pair began a romance while working on a stage production before the film was released. Married for ten years to the talented but mentally ill actress Vivien Leigh. Plowright was also married at the beginning of the relationship and became Olivier's third wife, Mrs. Olivier, in March 1961.

To escape the scandal of their divorce from Leigh, Olivier and Plowright traveled to New York, where they both appeared on stage, he in "Beckett" and she in Sierra Delaney's "A Taste of Honey," She won the Tony Award for Best Picture. Actress in drama.

Joan Ann Plowright was born in Brigg, Lincolnshire.

She appeared in amateur theater productions as a child, winning an amateur theater award at age 15, and worked for a while at Laban Action Arts Studio after graduating from high school. She made her stage debut in the 1948 production of If Four Walls Could Talk and subsequently won a two-year scholarship to study at London's prestigious Old Vic drama school. She made her stage debut in London in 1954 and two years later became a member of the Royal Court Theater, appearing in productions such as The Crucible, Ionesco's The Chair, and Shaw's Major Barbara and Saint Joan. . Olivier first noticed Plowright while performing in "The Country Housewife" and was immediately smitten.

Plowright eventually joined the National Theater which Olivier founded in the early 1960s. At the National Theatre, she appeared in “St. "Joan", "Uncle Vanya", "The Three Sisters", "Tartuffe", "Return to Methuselah", "Advertisement", "The Failure of Love's Labor", "The Merchant of Venice" and "The Quirk" The Woman Who Killed with Mercy, among others; later She starred in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", "The Cherry Orchard", "Mrs. Woolf's Career" and "Bernada Alba" in 1981-82. Home" and "Time and Conway."

As early as 1951, she appeared in the British television series Sarah Crew and in the 1954 adaptation of The Comedy of Errors for the BBC Sunday Evening Theatre, starring Richard B. Sheridan's play "The Comedy of Errors". The School for Scandal, 1959 version of the BBC program Theater of the World.

The actress made her acting debut in the 1957 Joseph Losey thriller "A Time for No Mercy," starring Michael Redgrave and Ann Todd. After "The Entertainer" in 1960, she played Sonia in the 1963 feature film adaptation of "Uncle Vanya." Starring Michael Redgrave, Olivier plays Dr. Astrov.

For a long time, the actress divided her time between occasional acting gigs and raising Olivier's three children, before returning to her career with enthusiasm at the age of 60.

She played Martha in Olivier's film adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Three Sisters (1970), and starred with Olivier in the 1973 TV adaptation of The Merchant of Venice.

Plowright won her first BAFTA award for her role as the mother of a disturbed boy in the 1977 drama Equus, starring Richard Burton. ) nomination. In the same year, she appeared in Granada Television's adaptation of Eduardo De Filippo's drama Saturday, Sunday, Monday, about the weekend events of a large Italian family, with Olivier as the head of the family, and Puig. Low White plays his daughter-in-law. Law, who is preparing for Sunday's feat, is the centerpiece of the weekend.

The actress played Lady Frank in the 1980 NBC adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank, opposite Maximilian Schell, and Lady Bracknell in the 1986 BBC adaptation of The Importance of Sincerity, and co-starred with Robert Guillaume in the 1992 television movie adaptation of Driving Miss Daisy.

In Richard Lone Kline's 1982 feature film Brimstone and Treacle, Plowright played the gullible mother and Denholm Elliott played her husband, who is played by Sting. The threat of evil characters. She was the best character in Hugh Hudson's Al Pacino-starrer disaster "Revolution," in which Plowright played Natasha Kinski (Nastassja Kinski) The character's mother.

In 1988, she starred in Peter Greenaway's Drowning, alongside Juliet Stevenson and Joely Richardson. Although the film was quite convoluted, The Washington Post called Plowright "extremely satirical"; the following year, she starred in "The Dressmaker" with Billie Whitelaw ), plays a woman named Nellie who is angry at the changes in an American-troubled Liverpool during World War II. The New York Times said: "Miss Plowright's performance throughout the film is both fierce and suave, which doesn't mean Nellie can't improvise when the situation calls for it."

In Levinson's "Avalon" (1990), she played the matriarch of a large Russian-Jewish family in Baltimore who, as the Times put it, was always with her husband (Armin Miller- Starr) argue "amusingly". In Widow's Peak, set in a post-World War I Irish town, she plays a widow who rules over a large number of women left widowed by the recent war.

As a treat for her grandchildren, she played Mrs. Wilson in the 1993 adaptation of Dennis the Menace, opposite Walter Matthau; and in 1996, she played the nanny in the live-action 101 Dalmatians, which focused on Glenn Close's "Cruella de Vil"; she also played Aunt Lucinda in 2008's "Spider-Man Chronicles". (Concerning that last one, Roger Ebert enthused, "The film is famous for its performances, especially the great Joan Plowright.")

Generally speaking, as the 1990s progressed into the mid-to-late 1960s, screen roles became smaller and less interesting. In Zeffirelli's 1996 adaptation of Jane Eyre, she did well as Mrs. Fairfax, but the character didn't have much to do. In "Surviving Picasso," starring Anthony Hopkins, she played the grandmother of the artist's mistress.

In the late 1990s, the actress signed on as a series regular on NBC's "Encore!" Encore! ” stars Nathan Lane as a former opera star who returns to the family winery, and Plowright as his mother; the series had a short runtime.

In 1999, the actress teamed up with Zeffirelli again, starring alongside Cher, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench and Lily Tomlin in Tea with Mussolini, a semi- The autobiographical story, co-written by the director, recounts his childhood when his closest companion was an old Englishman. A woman (Plowright) living in Florence in the 1930s is hired to groom him into a perfect English gentleman and brings him into the company of another woman. English-speaking expats living in the area. In 2002, she again had a supporting role in Zeffirelli's Forever Callas, the director's strange ode to his friend Maria Callas, starring Fanny Aldan.

Plowright had a supporting role in Steve Martin's 2003 film Bringing Down the House with Queen Latifah, in which touches on embarrassing racial and gender politics.

In 2006, when the actress was 77, she starred in "Mrs.", a charming and sentimental film aimed at older audiences. Palfrey of Claremont follows a woman seeking independence who stumbles upon a London hotel filled with older eccentrics.

She made her Broadway debut in 1958 in Ionesco's The Chairs and the Lesson, directed by Tony Richardson, the same year she also appeared with Olivier Starred in "The Entertainer" at the Rialto Theater. Decades later, in 1980, she starred on Broadway opposite Frank Finlay in Olivier's original Franco Zeffirelli production of Filumena.

In Herbert Kretzmer's book Snapshots: Encounters With Twentieth Century Legends, the author quotes Plowright:

"Everyone outside the theater thinks actors and actresses are sentimental people who act like they have a cute hobby. In fact, actors are more disciplined than most people. I was taught early on to keep my worries in Stage Door – All My Pains and Domestic Troubles.”

Olivier died in 1989. Plowright's brother David, an executive at Granada Television, died in 2006.

Plowright was married to actor Roger Gage from 1953 to 1960. She divorced him and married Olivier.

She is survived by a son, actor and director Richard Olivier, and two daughters, actresses Tamsin Olivier and Julie Kate Olivier, as well as several grandchildren.