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Susannah york

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Susannah York, a British actress who shone with her own light mainly in the rebellious 1960s, with memorable performances, has died on January 14, 2011. Thanks to Dance, dance, damn , she was nominated for an Oscar. The actress had endured a difficult fight against cancer.

The daughter of Thomas More in A Man Forever ( Fred Zinnemann , 1966), a dancer to exhaustion in Dance, Dance, Damn ( Sydney Pollack , 1969), lover ofTom Jones ( Tony Richardson , 1963), woman psychoanalyzed by eminent Freud doctor, Secret Passion ( John Huston , 1962). Truly the ’60s were a prodigious decade for an actress who saw those years at the height of her acting talents, as demonstrated by her Oscar nomination for Dance, Dance, Damn . A restless woman, it is striking that in the same year, 1969, she is able to be in two films about the war of very different kinds, the classic The Battle of Britain ( Guy Hamilton ) and Richard Attenborough ‘s satire Oh, what a war so pretty! .

The blonde, blue-eyed actress Susannah Yolande Fletcher, better known as Susannah York, was born in Chelsea, London, United Kingdom, on January 9, 1939, meaning that she died five days after celebrating her 72nd birthday. Raised in Scotland, she suffered from her parents’ divorce when she was 6 years old. She trained as an actress at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where she was awarded the Ronson Award for Most Promising Student. One of her first screen jobs was for television, where she shone with her own light as Abigail in Arthur Miller ‘s “The Crucible” , facing a then-also-young Sean Connery .

She made her film debut in a British classic, Whiskey and Glory ( Ronald Neame , 1960), where she was none other than the daughter of Alec Guinness . She was, as has been said, come and kiss the saint, because for ten years she was completely successful in her films, so that she built a solid acting career. Instead, in the 70s, she opted for more controversial and minority titles, such as Wild and Dangerous (1972), where she coincided with Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Caine . She would not resent a commercial role without any interest like the mother of Superman (1978), where she at least had the opportunity to share paternity with Marlon Brando .

Married to Michael Wells in 1960, they had two children who accompanied him in a television version of Charles Dickens ‘ “A Christmas Carol” . York would divorce Wells in 1980 and would not remarry. Although she has remained active until her death, she no longer did the old roles, and she also faced other challenges, such as writing children’s books. She could be seen in the cinema not long ago in Franklyn (2008) and on television she participated in the Doctors series .

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