Peggy Ashcroft
Dame Edith Margaret Emily Ashcroft DBE (22 December 1907 – 14 June 1991), known professionally as Peggy Ashcroft, was an English actress whose career spanned more than 60 years.
Peggy Ashcroft
2
Deirdre Hart-Davis (sister-in-law)
Fyodor Komissarzhevsky (father-in-law)
Vera Komissarzhevskaya (sister-in-law)
St John Hutchinson (father-in-law)
Mary Hutchinson (mother-in-law)
Emily Loizeau (granddaughter)
Born to a comfortable middle-class family, Ashcroft was determined from an early age to become an actress, despite parental opposition. She was working in smaller theatres even before graduating from drama school, and within two years she was starring in the West End. Ashcroft maintained her leading place in British theatre for the next 50 years. Always attracted by the ideals of permanent theatrical ensembles, she did much of her work for the Old Vic in the early 1930s, John Gielgud's companies in the 1930s and 1940s, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and its successor the Royal Shakespeare Company from the 1950s, and the National Theatre from the 1970s.
While well regarded in Shakespeare, Ashcroft was also known for her commitment to modern drama, appearing in plays by Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. Her career was almost wholly spent in the live theatre until the 1980s. She then turned to television and cinema with considerable success, winning three BAFTAs, one Golden Globe Award and a Academy Award, and received nominations for an additional Golden Globe Award and two Primetime Emmy Awards.
Life and career[edit]
Early years[edit]
Ashcroft was born in Croydon, Surrey, (now in Greater London) the younger child and only daughter of Violetta Maud, née Bernheim (1874–1926) and William Worsley Ashcroft (1878–1918), a land agent. According to Michael Billington, her biographer, Violetta Ashcroft was of Danish and German Jewish descent and a keen amateur actress.[1] Ashcroft's father was killed on active service in the First World War. She attended Woodford School, East Croydon, where one of her teachers encouraged her love of Shakespeare, but neither her teachers nor her mother approved of her desire to become a professional actress. Ashcroft was determined, however, and at the age of 16, she enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama, run by Elsie Fogerty, from whom her mother had taken lessons some years before.[2] The school's emphasis was on the voice and elegant diction, which did not appeal to Ashcroft or to her fellow pupil Laurence Olivier. She learned more from reading My Life in Art by Constantin Stanislavski, the influential director of the Moscow Art Theatre.[2]
Honours, awards and memorials[edit]
Ashcroft's British state honours were Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1951 and Dame Commander of the Order (DBE) in 1956. Her foreign state honours were the King's Gold Medal, Norway (1955), and the Order of St Olav, Norway (Commander, 1976). She was awarded honorary degrees by eight universities and was an honorary fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford. She was awarded a British Film Institute Fellowship in 1989.[28] In addition to the Oscar and BAFTA awards, she received a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a New Play for Old World in 1976, a Venice Film Festival Award for She's Been Away (1989), a BAFTA Award for the television play Caught on a Train (1980), a special award from the British Theatre Association for the television play Cream in My Coffee (1982), a special award from BAFTA (1990) and a special Laurence Olivier Award (1991).[16]
Ashcroft is commemorated with a memorial plaque in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. The Ashcroft Theatre in Croydon was named in her honour in 1962.[1] The Royal Shakespeare Company has an Ashcroft Room directly above the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon named after her, used for play rehearsals.