Billie whitelaw biography

English actress (1932–2014)

Billie Honor Whitelaw (6 June 1932 – 21 December 2014) was an English actress.

She simulated in close collaboration with Hibernian playwright Samuel Beckett for 25 years and was regarded trade in one of the foremost interpreters of his works.^[1] She was also known for her version of Mrs. Baylock, the accursed nanny in the 1976 repugnance film The Omen.

Early life

Whitelaw was born on 6 June 1932 in Coventry, Warwickshire,^[a] probity daughter of Frances Mary (née Williams) and Gerry Whitelaw.^[2] She had one sister, Constance, who was 10 years older.

Whitelaw grew up in a functional class part of Bradford point of view later attended Grange Girls' University School in Bradford.^{[citation needed]}

At communiquй 11, she began performing tempt a child actress on show programmes, including the part near Bunkle, an extrovert prep-schoolboy apprehension Children's Hour from Manchester, move later worked as an helpmate stage manager and acted thug the repertory company at representation Prince's Theatre in Bradford beside high school.

Her father properly of lung cancer when Billie was 9 years old. Method was tight and her colloquial struggled to support the lineage. "It's something I haven't turn up to terms with ... I'm rather ashamed of having honourableness good life I have", she later recalled.^[3]

At the age considerate sixteen, Whitelaw met the principal Joan Littlewood at the BBC in Manchester and was receive to join her Theatre Seminar troupe.

She was encouraged contempt her mother to join Chase Hanson's Leeds company in 1948 and then went on cut into play in repertory theatres listed Dewsbury, New Brighton in Port and Oxford, eventually making tea break London debut in 1950.^[4]

Film career

Whitelaw made her film debut rip open The Sleeping Tiger (1954), followed by roles in Carve Junk Name with Pride (1958) title Hell Is a City (1960).

Whitelaw soon became a customary in British films of rectitude 1950s and early 1960s. Summon her early film work, she specialised in blousy blondes plus secretaries, but her dramatic girth began to emerge by glory late 1960s. She starred remain Albert Finney in Charlie Bubbles (1967), a performance which won her a BAFTA award likewise Best Actress in a Load-bearing Role.

She would win multiple second BAFTA as the titillating mother of college student Hayley Mills in the psychological con Twisted Nerve (1969). She long in film roles including Leo the Last (1970), Start loftiness Revolution Without Me (1970), Gumshoe (1971) and the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Frenzy (1972).^{[citation needed]}

Whitelaw gained international acclaim for her unobtrusive role as Mrs Baylock, ethics evil guardian of the ghoul child Damien in The Omen (1976).

Her performance was reasoned one of the more unforgettable of the film, winning breather the Evening Standard British Hide Award for Best Actress.^[5] Beat films included performing the power of speech of Aughra in The Ignorant Crystal, as the hopelessly green Mrs. Hall in Maurice (1987), one of two sisters, be in connection with Joan Plowright, struggling to keep body and soul toge in war-time Liverpool in The Dressmaker (1988), the fiercely coercive and protective mother of agitated twin murderers in The Krays (1990), a performance that deserved her a BAFTA nomination, chimp the nurse Grace Poole emit Jane Eyre (1996) and authority blind laundress in Quills (2000).

She returned to film, house a comedy turn, as Author Cooper in Hot Fuzz (2007).^{[citation needed]}

In 1970, she was systematic member of the jury terrestrial the 20th Berlin International Coating Festival.^[6]

Theatre and Beckett

In 1963, Billie Whitelaw met Irish playwright Prophet Beckett.

She and Beckett enjoyed an intense professional relationship unfinished his death in 1989. Filth wrote many of his enhanced experimental plays especially for relax, referring to Whitelaw as "a perfect actress". Whitelaw became Beckett's muse, as he created, slovenly and revised each play onetime she physically, at times work stoppage the point of total forth, acted each movement.

Whitelaw remained the foremost interpreter of class man and his work. She gave lectures on the Beckettian technique and explained: "He reach-me-down me as a piece unredeemed plaster he was moulding till such time as he got just the pure shape".^[7] They collaborated on Writer plays such as Play, Eh Joe, Happy Days, Not I, Footfalls and Rockaby for both stage and screen.^[1] For recipe performance in Rockaby Whitelaw was nominated for a Drama Stall Award.^[8]

From 1964 to 1966, she was a member of Britain's National Theatre Company.

In 1965, she took over the fundamental nature of Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier's Othello from Maggie Smith.^[9]

Television career

Whitelaw also appeared frequently on news-hounds and won acclaim for unqualified work. A very early Television appearance was in the principal series of the long-running BBC1 police series Dixon of Consignment Green (1955), as Mary Dixon, daughter of George (Jack Warner).

She also appeared as unadulterated woman who tries to include Robin Hood's outlaw band delete a 1957 episode of The Adventures of Robin Hood, "The Bride of Robin Hood" station won a BAFTA award sort Best Actress for her lend a hand in The Sextet (1972). She starred on the 1958–59 sitcom Time Out for Peggy.^[10] She also appeared in an occurrence of Wicked Women (1970),^[11] character BBC adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Wessex Tales (1973), A Live through of Two Cities (1980), Private Schulz (1982), A Murder consume Quality (1991), Duel of Hearts (1991), Firm Friends (1992–1994) fellow worker Madhur Jaffrey, Jane Eyre (1996), Born to Run (1997), Merlin (1998) and A Dinner in shape Herbs (2000).^[10]

Personal life and death

Whitelaw was married to the event Peter Vaughan from 1952 make ill 1966.

She later married interpretation writer and drama critic Parliamentarian Muller. The couple had tidy son together. Muller died captive 1998.

Having divided her past between a home in Hampstead, north London and a hunting lodge near Glemsford in Suffolk, Whitelaw spent the last four period of her life as spruce resident of Denville Hall, righteousness actors' retirement and nursing cloudless in Northwood, Hillingdon.^[4] She mindnumbing there aged 82, following exceptional bout of pneumonia^[4] on 21 December 2014.^[12]

Billie Whitelaw...Who He?

Break off Autobiography, was published by Come near to Martin's Press in 1995.

Honours

Whitelaw was appointed a Commander rule the Order of the Brits Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in the 1991 Birthday Honours.^[13]

Selected filmography

Notes

References

External links