Anna Massey

Anna Massey died last Sunday July 3 at the age of 73 due to cancer. She was accompanied at the time of her death by her husband and her son.

The daughter of the great Canadian actor Raymond Massey , Anna was born in Thakeham, West Sussex, England on August 11, 1937. Her mother, Adrianne Allen , was also an actress, and so would her older brother, Daniel Massey . The actress began her career on stage very early, and at the age of 18 she already received a Tony nomination for her composition in “The Reluctant Debutante”, a work by William Douglas-Home that shows, in a comedy key, the entry into society of a young lady

He made his film debut at the hands of John Ford , his godfather, in A Crime Per Hour (1958). His best remembered works are those in which he appears as a victim of crimes, in Panic Photographer ( Michael Powell , 1960), a classic about voyeurism, and Frenzy ( Alfred Hitchcock , 1972), about a guy who strangles his victims with a tie. His work with Otto Preminger and Laurence Olivier in The Bunny Lake Kidnapping (1965) was also a thriller .

But Massey was involved in other types of films, pure and hard dramas. The most noteworthy are A Doll’s House (1973), based on the work of Henrik Ibsen , The Wheat Is Green (1979) – directed by George Cukor , and in the company of Katharine Hepburn – and Five Days, One Summer (1982), the last film by Fred Zinnemann , where Sean Connery was also present .

The truth is that the actress has never stopped acting, even when she already suffered from her illness. And she did everything. She could just as easily be in the weird Angels & Insects ( Philip Haas , 1995), or in a comedy based on a work by Oscar Wilde , The Importance of Being Earnest (2002). She has even had a relationship with Spanish cinema, in the science fiction production with Christian Bale The Machinist ( Brad Anderson , 2004) and the film shot in English by Álex de la Iglesia The Oxford Murders (2007). She also did a lot of TV, for example a miniseries based on “Mansfield Park”, the Jane Austen novel , and also visited the worlds of Tolstoy (“Anna Karenina”) and Dickens (“Oliver Twist”).

With regard to her personal life, Anna Massey was married between 1958 and 1962 with fellow actor Jeremy Brett , who gave her a son, David. After divorcing her, she would not remarry until 1990, with the scientist Uri Andres, with whom she said she had finally achieved happiness. Massey was awarded a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2004 and published her memoir in 2006 under the title Telling Some Tales. Among other things, she talked about her struggles with anorexia and stage fright.