Oscar-nominated UK actor Plowright dies at 95
- Last updated: January 18, 2025 | 11:25
Oscar-nominated UK actor Joan Plowright, a legend of stage and screen and wife of the great actor Laurence Olivier, has died at the age of 95, her family said on Friday.
“It is with great sadness that the family of Dame Joan Plowright, the Lady Olivier, inform you that she passed away peacefully on Jan.16, 2025 surrounded by her family at Denville Hall at the glorious age of 95.
“Her brilliant career will be remembered by many, her wonderful being always cherished by her children Richard, Tamsin and Julie-Kate, their families and Joan’s many friends,” they added.
Plowright was one of the leading actors of her generation.
Her career was largely played out in the theatre, often opposite her husband, but following his death in 1989 she began to find more roles on screen.
Her later film and television work introduced her to new generations, with two films in particular that took her to Italy.
In the 1991 film “Enchanted April,” set in the 1920s, she played the acid-tongued Mrs Fisher, for which she missed out on an Oscar to Marisa Tomei.
The other film that took her to Italy was Franco Zeffirelli’s 1999 film “Tea with Mussolini,” set in Florence in 1935, in which she teamed up with two other dames of the English stage, Maggie Smith and Judi Dench.
In 1993, she became one of the few actors to have won two Golden Globes in the same year, one for “Enchanted April” and the other for the HBO TV series “Stalin.”
She also appeared in films that attracted a younger audience such as “Dennis the Menace,” “Last Action Hero” and “101 Dalmatians.”
Plowright suffered macular degeneration which gradually caused her to go blind, leading her to retire from acting in 2014.
“It is a wrench,” she admitted at the time.
“But it is (a decision) that everybody has to make some time in their life and when you have had a very good life and been lucky, which I have, well you say ‘it’s my turn now.’”
Joan Ann Plowright was born in Brigg, a small market town in eastern England, where her father edited the local newspaper.
“You’re no oil painting, my girl, but you have the spark,” said Plowright’s mother, before she headed off to the Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol, adding “you have lovely eyes and thank God you have my legs and not your father’s.”
Agence France-Presse