Joan Plowright, celebrated star of stage and screen, dies at 95 | Joan Plowright

Actress Joan Plowright, celebrated for her long theater and film career, has died aged 95, her family announced.

Plowright gained recognition for her performances in the early years of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court and the National Theater when it was based at the Old Vic and managed by her second husband, Laurence Olivier.

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

“She had a long and illustrious career in theater, film and television for seven decades until her blindness forced her into retirement.

“She has enjoyed her last 10 years in Sussex with constant visits from friends and family, full of laughter and fond memories. The family is deeply grateful to Jean Wilson and everyone who cared for them over many years.”

She and Olivier appeared together in the West End and on Broadway in John Osborne’s The Entertainer and also starred in the screen version. At the National Theater she played Portia to Olivier’s Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, as well as roles such as Masha in Three Sisters, Sonya in Uncle Vanya and the eponymous heroine in Shaw’s Saint Joan.

Plowright was born in Brigg, Lincolnshire on October 28, 1929 and attended Scunthorpe Grammar School on a scholarship. She was the second of three children born to 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 won an acting trophy at a local theater festival at the age of 15. After leaving school at 17, she worked briefly as an assistant teacher before training at the Old Vic theater school in London.

After appearing in a late-night revue in London, she made her stage debut in Croydon in 1948 in a show called If Four Walls Told and then joined the Old Vic Theater Company, where she met the actor Roger Gage , whom she later married. She unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of Bianca in Orson Welles’ stage production of Othello. Welles remembered her and cast Plowright as Pip, the cabin boy, in his West End version of Moby Dick in 1955.

When she joined George Devine’s English Stage Company the following year, she felt “completely at home in a theater for the first time,” as she wrote in her memoirs And That’s Not All. “I was in contact with people who were just as passionate about creating theater that had to do with the 20th century. I have found my own voice as an actress and an intoxicating determination.” William Wycherley’s The Country Wife was her first success at the Royal Court and over several years she appeared in such diverse plays as Arnold Wesker’s Roots, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible,” George Bernard Shaw’s “Major Barbara” (in the title role) and Eugène Ionesco’s “The Crucible.” “Chairs” and “The Lesson,” both of which transferred to the Phoenix Theater in New York, where her co-star in “The Chairs” was Eli Wallach.

In 1957 Plowright took on Dorothy Tutin in the Royal Court production of John Osborne’s The Entertainer, which transferred to the West End. Through this she met Olivier, who played faded music hall star Archie Rice, her character’s father. He was impressed by Plowright’s performance in “The Country Wife” and jokingly renamed her “Miss Wheelshare.” “The Entertainer” was also made into a film and Plowright later chose a recording of Olivier singing “Why Should I Care?” as Archie Rice for one of her selections on Desert Island Discs. She took the play to Broadway and later won a Tony Award for the role of Jo, the pregnant teenager in Shelagh Delaney’s “A Taste of Honey,” with Angela Lansbury in the role of her mother.

In 1960, Olivier and Plowright starred in a stage production of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros directed by Orson Welles at the Royal Court. That year, Plowright divorced Gage. In 1961, Plowright married Olivier after media coverage of their relationship and the end of his marriage to Vivien Leigh.

During Olivier’s leadership of the National, Plowright played Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing and Hilda Wangel in The Master Builder, among others. In 1973, Franco Zeffirelli directed her in Eduardo de Filippo’s family drama Saturday, Sunday, Monday, where she told the Observer: “I had to cook a ragout live on stage.” The delicious smell left people happy but very hungry during the break Zeffirelli directed her again in De Filippo’s Filumena Marturano in 1977 and again in the Pirandello adaptation in 2003 Absolutely! (Maybe), both in London.

In 1988 Plowright directed a play about Marie Stopes, Married Love, and in 1990 she starred with her two daughters, Julie-Kate and Tamsin Olivier, in a production of Time and the Conways directed by her son Richard Olivier. By this time her film career had taken off. She played the mother of Joely Richardson and Juliet Stevenson in Peter Greenaway’s Drowning By Numbers. This was followed by roles in an adaptation of Beryl Bainbridge’s “The Dressmaker”, the offbeat comedy “I Love You to Death” and “Enchanted April”, which was filmed in Portofino on the Italian Riviera and won her an Oscar for her portrayal of an overbearing widow. brought nomination. The popular film “Tea With Mussolini” brought her back to Italy and Zeffirelli and cast her alongside her colleagues Maggie Smith and Judi Dench. She played the surrogate mother of a boy based on Zeffirelli.

In 2013, Plowright reprized her role as Saint Joan for a speech at the National Theater’s 50th birthday celebration. In 2018, she reflected on her career alongside Dench, Smith and Eileen Atkins in Roger Michell’s film Nothing Like a Dame.