Joan Plowright, Tony Winner and British Acting Legend, Dies at 95

Joan Plowright, a veteran stage-and-screen actor who won a Tony Award, two Golden Globes and nominations for an Oscar and an Emmy, died on January 16. In a statement, her family said Plowright died at Denville Hall, a retirement home for actors in Northwood, England. She was 95.

Plowright is among the most celebrated and significant English actresses of the modern era. From 1948 to 1990, she appeared in more than 50 English stage productions at the Old Vic Theatre and in productions of the National Theatre, with which she became closely tied after marrying legendary actor Laurence Olivier in 1961.

Plowright appeared in many roles on film, most notably Moby Dick (1956), The Entertainer (1960), Three Sisters (1974), Enchanted April (1991), for which she won a Golden Globe and earned an Academy Award nomination, Dennis the Menace (1993) and Tea with Mussolini (1999). On television, she earned a Golden Globe and Emmy Award nomination for the HBO film Stalin (1992).

Plowright made her Broadway debut in a 1958 double bill of Eugène Ionesco plays, as a decrepit old lady in The Chairs and a schoolgirl in The Lesson. Later that year, she played alongside Olivier in The Entertainer, transferring the play from London to Broadway (later appearing in the film adaptation) and earning great acclaim. “Joan Plowright’s bright attentiveness in the secondary part of a girl who spends most of her time listening [is an] illuminating and meticulous characterization that looks effortless on the stage,” wrote New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson in his review of that production. 

On Broadway, Plowright’s crowning achievement was her starring role in Shelagh Delaney's play A Taste of Honey (1960) opposite Angela Lansbury. Plowright played Josephine, a teenage girl who falls in love with a black sailor, conceives a child and is abandoned. Lansbury played her mother. “The evening’s treasure is Joan Plowright’s haunting performance,” wrote Howard Taubman in his New York Times review. “Through voice, accent and movement, she captures the shell of cynicism that the girl has grown to shield herself from hopelessness,” he wrote. “Miss Plowright gives the play its affecting core.” That year, Plowright took home a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She appeared on Broadway once more, in Filumena (1980).

By the time Plowright won her Tony, she had already established herself on the English stage. Born in England in 1929, Plowright began spending summers at drama school at around 14 or 15 years old, winning a scholarship to the Old Vic School, training extensively in productions of Chekhov and Shakespeare and becoming a dedicated student of Stanislavski and "the Method." Later, she trained with the Arts Council Repertory, acting in early productions of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, and joined the English Stage Company, where she excelled in roles in The Crucible and The Country Wife. By 1960, she appeared in 21 major English productions; through that decade, she would appear in 15 more significant London shows, many of which were performed at the Old Vic.

When A Taste of Honey came to Broadway in 1960, Plowright was already a world-renowned stage actress. “Joan Plowright, whose performance in A Taste of Honey has deluged her with critical applause, is not likely to be made either slothful by success or conformist by flattery,” wrote Murray Schumach in a 1960 New York Times article, writing of Plowright’s notoriously outspoken character. “For Miss Plowright, this side of 30, has earned the right and learned the manner of speaking her mind through fourteen years of acting,” he wrote.

In that article, Plowright delivered an admirable and opinionated defense of the theater. “I do not,” she said, “have to do anything I don’t want to do. Some years ago I was asked to sign a seven-year movie contract. I did not want it, because it could have kept me off the stage.” 

She published her memoir, And That’s Not All, in 2001, and was named a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2004. She officially retired from acting in 2014 after losing her vision due to macular degeneration. 

Plowright is survived by her three children: Tamsin, Richard and Julie-Kate, and several grandchildren.