Joan Plowright

Born 28 October 1929, in Brigg, Lincolnshire, Joan Ann Plowright is the daughter of Daisy Margaret and William Ernest Plowright, a journalist and newspaper editor. She attended Scunthorpe Grammar School. Her mother loved the theater, so she not only took her from time to time, but also encouraged her to participate in amateur productions. Determined to become an actress, she enrolled at the Old Vic Theater School in London. “I received extraordinary training, as the teachers directed productions with  Laurence Olivier. For us they were gods, but suddenly we discovered their human side, because they were affected by criticism from the newspapers. Sometimes they put them in broth, which in the end made the students develop an almost family relationship with them, ”he recalled in an interview. “They gave us very classical training, but at the same time they encouraged us to go see the Music Hall and to variety shows, because we had to know how to do everything”.

At the end, he spent a time playing various roles with the Company of the theater itself. “From there came well-known actors later. I remember playing a witch, in “Macbeth,” starring Albert Finney , in Birmingham. At one point the voice of her father was heard in the audience saying ‘this is the best “Macbeth” I’ve ever seen’, and her mother replied ‘and the only one’. We were dying laughing.” Orson WellesHe auditioned for “Othelo”, but it didn’t fit for that show. “They told me that he had no role for me, but that he had been very impressed with me, so he would call me another time. And he remembered yes, when he was going to do an extraordinary version of “Moby Dick”, where he gave me the role of the cabin boy Pip ”. In 1953 she married Roger Gage, but the marriage broke down in 1960, with no children.

Established as a stage actress, she shared the stage with Laurence Olivier in 1957, when they both starred in “The Entertainer”, newly written by John Osborne , which would later become a classic. Divorced from actress Jill Esmond , the divo had just ended a stormy relationship with Vivien Leigh , from whom he separated permanently to join Joan Plowright (despite the fact that everything indicates that he never forgot the protagonist of Gone with the Wind ). “He was always a guy haunted by the past,” recalled Joan Plowright .. Despite everything, Olivier was the father of the three offspring of the actress, Richard Kerr, Tamsin and Julie Kate, the last two also dedicated to acting. “It was very difficult for me to have children, because I had to work almost every day of the week in the theater, but children are the most important thing in life, the only thing that will remain when you are no longer here,” he commented. .

In 1961 he won the Tony, the highest theater award in the United States for “A Taste of Honey.” The cinema did not attract Joan Plowright ‘s attention , despite the fact that she took part in a version for the big screen of Uncle Vanya , by Anton Chekhov , in 1963, with Olivier, and he directed it in the film Three Sisters (1970), also Based on a work by the Russian author. She also agreed to play the devout Christian Dora Strang, in Equus , with whom Sidney Lumet covered the famous work by Peter Shaffer. She was also the mother-in-law of Al Pacino in Revolution , from 1985.

Following Olivier’s death in 1989, Joan Plowright ‘s big screen career  began to take off. She gave life to Eva Krinchisky, a Polish emigrant living in Baltimore, half-abandoned by her family, in Barry Levinson ‘s pleasant Avalon . She was later a mother-in-law obsessed with poisoning her son-in-law ( Kevin Kline ) in Lawrence Kasdan ‘s hilarious I’ll Love You Until I Kill You . 1992 was her great year, as she won two Golden Globes for best television actress for the telefilm Stalin , a biopic of the bloody Soviet tyrant, and for best supporting actress in a film for An Enchanted April., where she embodied what is perhaps her most remembered character, Mrs. Fisher, an old woman who, after spending a few days in Tuscany, came to the conclusion that she had to make the most of her remaining days with intensity. For this last work, she was also nominated for an Oscar, which to the surprise of locals and strangers went to Marisa Tomei , for My Cousin Vinny .

From that moment on, Joan Plowright  was lavished on the screen, almost always as a luxury secondary. She was, for example, Mrs. Wilson, a friendly neighbor in Daniel the Naughty , a cinema owner in The Last Big Hero , a nanny in 101 Dalmatians (More Alive Than Ever) , accused of witchcraft in The Scarlet Letter , a widow in The Peak of the widows , and grandmother of the painter Françoise Gilot, who was not amused that she became Picasso’s lover, in Surviving Picasso . The Italian Franco Zeffirelli  took a special liking to her, turning her into a housekeeper in Jane Eyre ., alma mater of a group of culture lovers in Tea with Mussolini , and journalist, friend of the protagonist in Callas Forever .

She wrote her memoir “And That’s Not All” in 2001. Two years later, she was awarded a Dame of the Order of the British Empire. She concluded her career with two haunted house feature films, The Spiderwick Chronicles  (2008), where she gave life to the protagonist’s great-grandmother, owner of a sumptuous house, and The Secret of the Mansion (2009), where she has an appearance. very minor. Since then, Joan Plowright  no longer looked strong, so she withdrew. She participated in 2018 in the documentary Nothing Like a Dame , by Roger Michell, where she received in the mansion in the south of England that she bought with her husband from other great actresses and joked about the ailments of age, apparently, she has lost hearing and sight. “Between the four of us we have three good eyes,” she said between laughs. She is very satisfied with having been able to work in what she liked. “My father wanted me to be a journalist like him, I was good at writing,” she recalled on one occasion. “But I needed to be an actress. It has been a great privilege to have had this life. She felt the magic every time she raised a curtain”.