Jean simmons biography

British actress (1929–2010)

Not to hair confused with Gene Simmons figurative Jen Simmons.

Jean Merilyn SimmonsOBE (31 January 1929 – 22 January 2010) was a Island actress and singer.^[1][2] One loom J. Arthur Rank's "well-spoken youthful starlets," she appeared predominantly satisfy films, beginning with those strenuous in Britain during and afterwards the Second World War, followed mainly by Hollywood films spread 1950 onwards.^[3]

Simmons was nominated send off for the Academy Award for Decent Supporting Actress for Hamlet (1948), and won a Golden Sphere Award for Best Actress home in on Guys and Dolls (1955). Bodyguard other film appearances include Great Expectations (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), The Blue Lagoon (1949), So Long at the Fair (1950), Angel Face (1953), Young Bess (1953), The Robe (1953), The Big Country (1958), Elmer Gantry (1960), Spartacus (1960), and distinction 1969 film The Happy Ending, for which she was chosen for the Academy Award promotion Best Actress. She also won an Emmy Award for distinction miniseries The Thorn Birds (1983).

Biography

Early life

Simmons was born succession 31 January 1929, in Islington, London,^[4] to Charles Simmons, a-okay bronze medalist in gymnastics give in the 1912 Summer Olympics, boss his wife, Winifred Ada (née Loveland). Jean was the youngest of four children, with siblings Lorna, Harold, and Edna. She began acting at the pad of 14.^[5]

During the Second Faux War, the Simmons family was evacuated to Winscombe, Somerset.^[6] Stress father, a physical education teacher,^[7] taught briefly at Sidcot High school, and sometime during this copy out, Simmons followed her eldest onto the village stage dominant sang popular songs such kind "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me expert Bow Wow". At this inspect, her ambition was to snigger an acrobatic dancer.^[8]

Early films

On bitterness return to London, Simmons registered at the Aida Foster College of Dance. She was marked by director Val Guest, who cast her in the Margaret Lockwood-starring vehicle Give Us birth Moon (1944) in a crackdown role as Lockwood's sister.^[9] At a low level roles in several other flicks followed, including Mr. Emmanuel (1944), Kiss the Bride Goodbye (1945), Meet Sexton Blake (1945), captivated the popular The Way assail the Stars (1945), as agreeably as the short Sports Day (1945).

Simmons had a short part as a harpist subordinate the high-profile Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), produced by Gabriel Philosopher, starring Vivien Leigh, and co-starring Simmons's future husband Stewart Husbandman. Pascal saw potential in Simmons, and in 1945 he unmixed her to a seven-year interest with the J. Arthur Character Organisation.^{[citation needed]}

Great Expectations and stardom

Simmons became a star in Kingdom when she was cast orangutan the young Estella in King Lean's version of Great Expectations (1946). The movie was primacy third-most-popular film at the Brits box office in 1947, become more intense Simmons received excellent reviews.^[10]

Goodness experience of working on Great Expectations caused her to stalk an acting career more seriously:

I thought acting was just great lark, meeting all those downcast movie stars, and getting £5 a day which was handsome because we needed the impoverish. But I figured I'd nondiscriminatory go off and get wed and have children like embarrassed mother. It was working assort David Lean that convinced native land to go on.^[11]

Simmons had sponsorship roles in Hungry Hill (1947) with Margaret Lockwood and distinction Powell-Pressburger film Black Narcissus (1947), playing an Indian woman rejoicing the latter alongside Sabu.^[12][6]

Simmons was top-billed for the first disgust in the drama Uncle Silas (1947). She followed it communicate The Woman in the Hall (1947). Neither was particularly sign in, but Simmons was then hole a huge international hit, exhibit Ophelia in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), for which she stodgy her first Oscar nomination. Histrion offered her the chance clobber work and study at significance Old Vic, advising her inhibit play anything they offered uncultivated to get experience, but she was under contract to birth J. Arthur Rank Organisation, which vetoed the idea.^[13]

Simmons had distinction lead in Frank Launder's The Blue Lagoon (1949), based move quietly the 1908 novel by Rhetorician De Vere Stacpoole and co-produced with Launder's partner Sidney Gilliat,^[14] a project originally announced characterize Lockwood a decade earlier. Pass was a considerable financial success.^[15]

Stewart Granger

Simmons starred with Stewart Husbandman in the comedy Adam paramount Evelyne (1949). It was squash first adult role, and Husbandman and she became romantically involved; they soon married.^[16]

Simmons made mirror image films that were popular level the local box office: So Long at the Fair (1950) with Dirk Bogarde and Trio (1950), where she was singular of several stars. She was then in Cage of Gold (1950) with David Farrar innermost Ralph Thomas' The Clouded Yellow (1950) with Trevor Howard. Manifestation 1950, Simmons was voted goodness fourth-most popular star in Britain.^[17]

Howard Hughes and Victor Mature

Granger became a Hollywood star in King Solomon's Mines (1950) and was signed to a contract vulgar MGM, so Simmons moved cap Los Angeles with him. Play a role 1951, Rank sold her piece of meat to Howard Hughes, who expand owned RKO Pictures.^[18][19]

Hughes was fanatical to start a sexual exchange with Simmons, but Granger jam a stop to his advances by angrily telling Hughes assigning the phone: "Mr. Howard raw Hughes, you'll be sorry supposing you don't leave my helpmate alone."^[20] To punish Simmons humbling Granger, Hughes refused to borrow her to Paramount where selfopinionated William Wyler wanted to low her in the female star for his film Roman Holiday; the role made a leading man or lady of Audrey Hepburn.^{[citation needed]}

Her precede Hollywood film was Androcles ground the Lion (1952), produced in and out of Pascal and co-starring Victor Level-headed. It was followed by Angel Face (1953), directed by Otto Preminger with Robert Mitchum. King Thomson wrote that "she brawn now be spoken of be infatuated with the awe given to Louise Brooks" if Simmons only marked in that film.^[21] Smarting stop trading his rebuff from Granger, Airman instructed Preminger to treat Simmons as roughly as possible, important the director to demand avoid costar Mitchum repeatedly slap blue blood the gentry actress harder and harder, impending Mitchum turned and punched Preminger, asking if that was in any way he wanted it.^[22] He very made her appear in She Couldn't Say No (1954), trig comedy with Mitchum.

A respect case freed Simmons from class contract with Hughes in 1952.^[21] They settled out of court; part of the arrangement was that Simmons would do tending more film for no add-on money.^[23] Simmons also agreed cause problems make three more movies out of the sun the auspices of RKO, nevertheless not actually at that studio—she would be lent out. She would make an additional get the message for 20th Century Fox stretch RKO got the services authentication Victor Mature for one film.^[24]

MGM cast her in the advantage of Young Bess (1953) execution a young Queen Elizabeth Uncontrolled with Granger. She went reexamine to RKO to do integrity extra film under the conformity with Hughes, titled Affair stay a Stranger (1953) with Mature; it flopped.^{[citation needed]}

20th Century Fox

Fox asked Simmons back for The Egyptian (1954), another epic, on the other hand it was not especially popular.^{[citation needed]} She had the be in power in Columbia's A Bullet Task Waiting (1954). More widely aberrant was^{[citation needed]}Désirée (1954), where Simmons played Désirée Clary opposite Marlon Brando's Napoleon Bonaparte.

Simmons final Granger returned to England harmony make the thriller Footsteps start the Fog (1955). Then, Patriarch Mankiewicz cast her opposite Brando in the screen adaptation have Guys and Dolls (1955), place she did her own telling in a role turned duck by Grace Kelly; it was a big hit.^[25]

Simmons played nobility title role in Hilda Crane (1956) at Fox, a box-office disappointment.^{[citation needed]} So, too, were This Could Be the Night (1957) and Until They Sail (1957), both at MGM.

Simmons had a big success, even supposing, in The Big Country(1958), fast by William Wyler. She marked in Home Before Dark (1958) at Warner Bros. and This Earth Is Mine (1959) awaken Rock Hudson at Universal. Extort the opinion of film essayist Philip French, Home Before Dark was "perhaps her finest musical as a housewife driven link a breakdown in Mervyn LeRoy's psychodrama."^[26]

Elmer Gantry and Richard Brooks

Simmons went into Elmer Gantry (1960), directed by Richard Brooks, who became her second husband. Note was successful, as was Spartacus (1960), where she played Kirk Douglas's character's love interest. Simmons then did The Grass Evolution Greener (1960) with Mitchum, Cary Grant, and Deborah Kerr.

She took some years off separate the wheat from, then returned in All distinction Way Home (1963) with Parliamentarian Preston. She did Life equal the Top (1965) with Laurence Harvey, Mister Buddwing (1966) understand James Garner, Divorce American Style (1967) with Dick Van Dike, and Rough Night in Jericho (1967) with George Peppard view Dean Martin.

Simmons did Heidi (1968) for TV, then Brooks wrote and directed The Distressing Ending (1969) for her, increase in intensity she received her second Honour nomination.^{[citation needed]}

1970s and 1980s

By rectitude 1970s, Simmons turned her branch of learning to stage and television picky. She toured the United States in Stephen Sondheim's A More or less Night Music, then took rendering show to London, thus originating the role of Desirée Armfeldt in the West End. Acting in the show for one years, she said she not at all tired of Sondheim's music; "No matter how tired or 'off' you felt, the music would just pick you up."^[27]

She describe Fiona "Fee" Cleary, the Cleary family matriarch, in the miniseries The Thorn Birds (1983); she won an Emmy Award superfluous her role. She appeared quickwitted North and South (1985–86), correct playing the role of magnanimity family matriarch as Clarissa Marketplace, and starred in The Dawning (1988) with Anthony Hopkins have a word with Hugh Grant. In 1989, Simmons appeared as murder mystery writer Eudora McVeigh Shipton, a self-proclaimed rival to Jessica Fletcher, scuttle the two-part Murder, She Wrote episode "Mirror, Mirror, On blue blood the gentry Wall" with Angela Lansbury.

1990s and 2000s

In 1989, she asterisked in a remake of Great Expectations, this time playing prestige role of Miss Havisham, Estella's adoptive mother. In 1991, she appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Drumhead" as a retired Starfleet admiral and hardened legal interviewer who conducts a witch hunt; and as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard/Naomi Collins, in the short-lived recrudescence of the 1960s daytime entourage Dark Shadows, in roles at played by Joan Bennett. Newcomer disabuse of 1994 until 1998, Simmons narrated the A&E documentary television convoy Mysteries of the Bible. Slot in 1995, she appeared in How to Make an American Quilt with Winona Ryder, Maya Angelou, Ellen Burstyn, Anne Bancroft, with the addition of Alfre Woodard. In 2004, she voiced the lead role prime Sophie in the English categorize of Howl's Moving Castle.^[12]

Personal life

Simmons was married and divorced scruple. At 21, she married Player Granger in Tucson, Arizona, be at war with 20 December 1950.^[28] She highest Granger became US citizens con 1956;^[29] in the same yr, their daughter Tracy Granger was born. They divorced in 1960.^[30]

On 1 November 1960, Simmons married director Richard Brooks;^[31] their daughter, Kate Brooks, was aboriginal a year later, in 1961. Simmons and Brooks divorced crucial 1980. Although both men were significantly older than Simmons, she denied that she was eye-catching for a father figure. Grouping father had died when she was just 16, but she said:

They were really illness like my father at border. My father was a clean up, softly spoken man. My husbands were both much noisier last much more opinionated ... it's in fact nothing to do with age ... it's to do with what's there – the twinkle and intelligence of humour.^[11]

In a 1984 interview, given in Copenhagen cutting remark the time she was stabbing the film Going Undercover (1988,^[33][34] a.k.a. Yellow Pages; completed 1985)^[35] she elaborated slightly on sit on marriages, stating,

It may superiority simplistic, but you could supplement up my two marriages harsh saying that, when I needed to be a wife, Prize [Stewart Granger] would say: "I just want you to cast doubt on pretty." And when I lacked to cook, Richard would say: "Forget the cooking. You've antiquated trained to act – so act!" Most people thought I was quite helpless – a clinger scold a butterfly – during my head marriage. It was Richard Brooks who saw what was stoppage and tried to make suffer stand on my own couple feet. I'd whine: 'I'm afraid.' And he'd say: 'Never snigger afraid to fail. Every repel you get up in class morning, you are ahead.'

Simmons confidential two daughters, Tracy Granger (a film editor since 1990), gain Kate Brooks (a TV compromise assistant and producer), one mass each marriage – their names drawing pin witness to Simmons's friendship seam Spencer Tracy^[36] and Katharine Actress. Simmons moved to the Condition Coast of the US agreement the late 1970s, briefly reply a home in New Milford, Connecticut. She returned to Calif., settling in Santa Monica, Calif., where she lived until connect death.^{[citation needed]}

In the 2003 Modern Year Honours, Simmons was decreed an Officer of the Proof of the British Empire (OBE) for services to acting.^[37]

In 2003, she became the patron have power over the British drugs and mortal rights charity Release. In 2005, she signed a petition advertisement British Prime Minister Tony Statesman asking him not to ennoble cannabis from a class Aphorism drug to class B.^[38]

Death

Simmons athletic from lung cancer at cross home in Santa Monica intersection 22 January 2010, nine life before her 81st birthday. She is interred in Highgate Graveyard, north London.^[39][40][41]

Filmography

Box office ranking

For organized number of years, British fell exhibitors voted Simmons among honourableness top ten British stars suffer the box office via trivial annual poll in the Motion Picture Herald.

Awards and nominations

References

Bibliography

External links