From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- See Jill Bennett (American
actress) for the American actress with the same name.
Jill Bennett (December 24, 1931 – October 4,
1990) was a British actress, the fourth wife of playwright John Osborne.
Biography
Early life
and career
She was born in Penang, Federated Malay States, to
British parents, educated at Priors Field, an independent girls
boarding school in Godalming, and trained at RADA. She made her stage début
in the 1949 season at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford upon Avon, and her film début in
Moulin Rouge (1952).
Bennett made many appearances in British films during the 1950s
and 1960s, notably The Nanny (1965) (with Bette Davis),
Inadmissible Evidence (1968), The Charge of the
Light Brigade (1968) and as Calphurnia to John Gielgud's Caesar
in a 1970 version of Julius Caesar. She also had
small roles in Britannia Hospital (1982),
For Your Eyes Only
(1981), Lady
Jane (1986) and her final film performance in The Sheltering Sky
(1990).
She made forays into television, most notably in
Country with Wendy Hiller in 1981 and as the colourful
Lady Grace Fanner in the adaptation of John Mortimer's novel, Paradise
Postponed (1985). Among several roles, Osborne wrote the
character of Annie in his play The Hotel in Amsterdam for
her. But Bennett's busy schedule prevented her from playing the
role until it was televised in 1971.[1].
In 1979 she co-starred with Rachel Roberts in the LWT drama, The
Old Crowd, directed by Lindsay Anderson with a screenplay by
Alan Bennett, who
later gently pointed out in the index to his collection of prose,
Untold Stories (Faber 2005): "No relation".
Marriages
She was the live-in companion of actor Godfrey Tearle in the late 1940s and
early 1950s. She was married to screenwriter Willis Hall and later to Osborne (who had
been married three times already). She and Osborne divorced messily
and decidedly non-amicably in 1978. She had no children.
Death
She committed suicide in 1990, aged 58, having long suffered
from depression and the brutalizing effects of her marriage to the
misogynistic Osborne.[2]
Posthumous
In 1992 her friend, director Lindsay Anderson, included a touching
episode in his autobiographical BBC film Is That All There
Is?, with a boat trip down the River Thames (several of her professional
colleagues and friends aboard) to scatter her ashes on the waters
while musician Alan
Price sang the song "Is That All There Is?".
Theatre
career
- Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford upon Avon, 1949
season
- Titania in A Midsummer
Night’s Dream, St Martin's Theatre, December 1949
- Anni in Captain Carvallo , St. James'
Theatre, August 1950
- Iras in Caesar and Cleopatra and
Antony and Cleopatra, St.
James' Theatre, May 1951
- Helen Eliot in The Night of the Ball, New Theatre,
January 1955
- Masha in The
Seagull, Saville Theatre, August 1956
- Mrs. Martin in The Bald Prima
Donna, Arts Theatre, November 1956
- Sarah Stanham in The Touch of Fear, Aldwych Theatre,
December 1956
- Isabelle in Dinner With the Family, New Theatre,
December 1957
- Penelope in Last Day in Dreamland and A Glimpse of
the Sea, Lyric Hammersmith, November 1959
- Susan Roper in Breakfast for One, Arts Theatre, April
1961
- Feemy Evans in The Showing Up of Blanco Posnet, and
Lavinia in Androcles and the Lion,
Mermaid Theatre, October 1961
- Estelle in In Camera (Huis
Clos), Oxford Playhouse, February 1962
- Ophelia in Castle in Sweden, Piccadilly Theatre, May
1962
- Hilary in The Sponge Room, and Elizabeth Mintey in
Squat Betty, Royal Court, December 1962
- Isabelle in The Love Game, New Arts Theatre, October
1964
- Countess Sophia Delyanoff in A Patriot for Me, Royal Court,
June 1965
- Anna Bowers in A Lily in Little India, Hampstead
Theatre Club, November 1965
- Imogen Parrott in Trelawney of the Wells, National
Theatre at the Old Vic, August 1966
- Katerina in The Storm, National Theatre at the Old
Vic, October 1966
- Pamela in Time Present, Royal Court, May 1968 at the
Duke of York’s Theatre, July 1968 (for which she won the Variety Club and Evening Standard Awards for
Best Actress)
- Anna Bowers in Three Months Gone at the Royal Court in
January 1970; at the Duchess Theatre in March 1970,
- Frederica in West of Suez, Royal Court, August 1971;
Cambridge Theatre, October 1971
- Hedda in Hedda
Gabler, Royal Court, June 1972
- Amanda in Private Lives (briefly taking over
for Maggie Smith),
Queen's Theatre, June 1973
- Leslie Crosbie in The Letter, Palace Theatre,
Watford, July 1973
- Isobel Sands in The End of Me Old Cigar, Greenwich
Theatre, January 1975
- Fay in Loot, Royal Court, June 1975
- Sally Prosser in Watch It Come Down, National Theatre
at the Old Vic, February 1976 at the National Theatre at the Old
Vic; March 1976 at the Lyttelton Theatre
- Mrs. Shankland and Miss Railton-Bell in Separate
Tables, Apollo Theatre, January 1977
- Mrs. Tina in The Aspern Papers (1978); The
Queen in The Eagle Has Two Heads (1979); and Maggie Cutler
in The Man Who Came to
Dinner (1979); all at the Chichester Festival Theatre
- Gertrude in Hamlet, Royal Court, April 1980
- Janine in Infidelities, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in
August 1985; at the Donmar Warehouse in October 1985; and revived
at the Boulevard Theatre in June 1986
- Queen Elizabeth I in Mary
Stuart, Edinburgh Festival, August 1987
- Miss Singer in Exceptions, New End Theatre,
Hampstead, July 1988
- Anne in Poor Nanny, King's Head Theatre, March
1989
References
- ^
John Osborne: A Patriot for Us by John Heilpern, Chatto
& Windus, 2006 ISBN 978-0-70116-780-7, p.357
- ^
Heilpern, pp 412-3, 443-4
Theatre
Sources
- Who’s Who in the Theatre, 17th Edition, vol. #1 (Gale
Research, 1981). ISBN 0810302357
- 25 Years of the English Stage Company at the Royal
Court, Richard Findlater editor (Amber Lane Press, 1981). ISBN
090639922X
- Theatre
Record (periodical indexes)
External
links
Persondata |
NAME |
Bennett, Jill |
ALTERNATIVE
NAMES |
|
SHORT
DESCRIPTION |
Actress |
DATE OF BIRTH |
December 24, 1931 |
PLACE OF
BIRTH |
Penang, Federated Malay States |
DATE OF DEATH |
October 4, 1990 |
PLACE OF
DEATH |
London, England |