Society of London Theatre Special Award (Laurence Olivier Lifetime Achivement Award)

Laurence Olivier could speak William Shakespeare's lines as naturally as if he were "actually thinking them," said English playwright Charles Bennett, who met Olivier in 1927. Laurence Kerr Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, England, to Agnes Louise (Crookenden) and Gerard Kerr Olivier, a High Anglican priest. His surname came from a great-great-grandfather who was of French Huguenot origin.

One of Olivier's earliest successes as a Shakespearean actor on the London stage came in 1935 when he played "Romeo" and "Mercutio" in alternate performances of "Romeo and Juliet" with John Gielgud. A young Englishwoman just beginning her career on the stage fell in love with Olivier's Romeo. In 1937, she was "Ophelia" to his "Hamlet" in a special performance at Kronborg Castle, Elsinore (Helsingør), Denmark. In 1940, she became his second wife after both returned from making films in America that were major box office hits of 1939. His film was Wuthering Heights (1939), her film was Gone with the Wind (1939). Vivien Leigh and Olivier were screen lovers in Fire Over England (1937), 21 Days Together (1940) and That Hamilton Woman (1941).

There was almost a fourth film together in 1944 when Olivier and Leigh traveled to Scotland with Charles C. Bennett to research the real-life story of a Scottish girl accused of murdering her French lover. Bennett recalled that Olivier researched the story "with all the thoroughness of Sherlock Holmes" and "we unearthed evidence, never known or produced at the trial, that would most certainly have sent the young lady to the gallows." The film project was then abandoned. During their two-decade marriage, Olivier and Leigh appeared on the stage in England and America and made films whenever they really needed to make some money.

In 1951, Olivier was working on a screen adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel "Sister Carrie" (Carrie (1952)) while Leigh was completing work on the film version of the Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). She won her second Oscar for bringing "Blanche DuBois" to the screen. Carrie (1952) was a film that Olivier never talked about. George Hurstwood, a middle-aged married man from Chicago who tricked a young woman into leaving a younger man about to marry her, became a New York street person in the novel. Olivier played him as a somewhat nicer person who didn't fall quite as low. A PBS documentary on Olivier's career broadcast in 1987 covered his first sojourn in Hollywood in the early 1930s with his first wife, Jill Esmond, and noted that her star was higher than his at that time. On film, he was upstaged by his second wife, too, even though the list of films he made is four times as long as hers.

More than half of his film credits come after The Entertainer (1960), which started out as a play in London in 1957. When the play moved across the Atlantic to Broadway in 1958, the role of "Archie Rice"'s daughter was taken over by Joan Plowright, who was also in the film. They married soon after the release of The Entertainer (1960).

Sir Ralph Richardson was one of the greatest actors of the 20th Century English-language theater, ascending to the height of his profession in the mid-1930s when he became a star in London's West End. He became the first actor of his generation to be knighted. He became Sir Ralph in 1947, and was quickly followed by Laurence Olivier in 1948, and then by John Gielgud in 1953. Co-stars and friends, the three theatrical knights were considered the greatest English actors of their generation, primarily for their mastery of the Shakespearean canon. They occupied the height of the British acting pantheon in the post-World War II years.

Charles Wintour was born on 18 May 1917 in Pamphill, Dorset, England, UK. He was married to Audrey Slaughter and Eleanor "Nonie" Trego Baker. He died on 4 November 1999 in Tisbury, Wiltshire, England, UK.

Joan Littlewood was the very first woman to be nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play. In 1961, she received the groundbreaking nomination for "The Hostage". Four years later, Joan would break ground again, as the very first woman to be nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical. She received the second nomination for the 1965 musical "Oh, What a Lovely War". The show was also a nominee for Best Musical, for which Joan was a producer. Although she didn't win any of her Tony nominations, Joan Littlewood was able to break through as a pioneer in a field still dominated by men.

Arnold Goodman was born on 21 August 1913. He died on 12 May 1995.

Sir John Gielgud enjoyed a theatrical career that spanned 64 years, from a role in a 1924 London production of "The Constant Nymph" to the 1988 production of " Sir Sydney Cockerell: The Best of Friends", and a film career which began in 1924 and ended not long before his death. He played his first Hamlet in London in 1929, and was hailed by many as the Hamlet of his generation (and in hindsight, of the century). In 1965, his Shakespearean colloquy "The Ages of Man" won him a Tony on Broadway. The great actor, at his best in classical roles, even won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar uncharacteristically playing a butler in the comedy hit Arthur (1981).

He was born Arthur John Gielgud on April 14, 1904, in South Kensington, London, to Franciszek Henryk (later Frank Henry) Gielgud, a stockbroker, and his wife, Kate Terry. His father was of Polish ancestry, with distant Lithuanian roots, while his mother was English and from an acting family. His paternal great-grandmother, Aniela (nee Wasinskiej) Aszperger, had been a Shakespearean actress in Poland, and his maternal grandmother, Kate Terry, had played Cordelia at the age of 14. Also on his mother's side, his great-uncle Fred Terry became a stage star acting the role of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and Fred's sister, Ellen Terry, the great stage actress who made her fame as Henry Irving's leading lady, was his great-aunt. (Gielgud's brother, Val Gielgud, became the head of BBC Radio in the 1950s).

Arthur John Gielgud attended Hillside prep school, where he had his first stage experience as Shakespeare's Shylock and as Humpty Dumpty, before moving on to the Westminster school in London. He often played hooky from school to attend performances of the Diaghilev Ballet. He was 17 years old when he made his debut as a professional actor at the Old Vic in 1921, playing a French herald in "Henry V." The next year, his cousin Phyllis Neilson-Terry hired him as an assistant stage manager and understudy for "The Wheel". While pursuing his stage career, he studied acting at Lady Benson's Dramatic Academy before attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) for a year. He appeared in his first motion picture in 1923 in the silent picture Who Is the Man? (1924).

Gielgud's first major role on the London stage was as Trofimov in Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard." In 1924, he understudied Noel Coward in "The Vortex" and "The Constant Nymph," parts he subsequently took over. During the run of "The Constant Nymph", Gielgud met the actor John Perry, who had a walk-on role in Avery Hopwood's "The Golddiggers", starring Tallulah Bankhead. Gielgud and Perry fell in love, and Perry abandoned his unpromising stage career to live with Gielgud in his flat in Covent Garden. Subsequently, Gielgud joined J. B. Fagan's company that played in Oxford and in the West End, as London's commercial theater district was called.

In 1929, Lilian Baylis invited him to join the Old Vic, and he played all the major parts in repertory over the next two seasons, establishing his reputation as a great actor. It was in 1929-30 season that Gielgud first played the title role in William Shakespeare's "Hamlet", which made theatrical history as it was the first time an English actor under 40 had played the part in the West End. Blessed with what Laurence Olivier called "The Voice that Wooed the World", Gielgud revolutionized the role with the speed of his delivery. Developing his interpretation of Hamlet in subsequent performance over the years, he would generally be accorded the greatest Hamlet of his generation and of the 20th century, his facility with the part rivaled only on stage by John Barrymore . But it was his 1929-30 Hamlet and his performance in the title role of Shakespeare's "Richard II", another role he made his own, that earned him the reputation as the premier Shakespearean actor in England.

Inspired by Gielgud's performances, a woman wrote, under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot, the play "Richard of Bordeaux" specifically for him, and he starred in and directed the play. "Richard of Bordeaux" was a box-office smash and made him a celebrity. This huge financial success of the play meant that Gielgud could stage classics in the West End. An innovator, Gielgud pioneered the theater company system. He also encouraged a new generation of actors, including Laurence Olivier, Peggy Ashcroft, Edith Evans, Glen Byam Shaw, Anthony Quayle, George Devine, and Alec Guinness, who reportedly saw him in "Richard of Bordeaux" fifteen times. After World War II, Gielgud proved a mentor to a young de-mobilized R.A.F. enlisted man, Richard Jenkins, who became a star overnight in Gielgud's production of "The Lady's Not for Burning" as Richard Burton. The two remained friends for all of Burton's life, Gielgud directing Burton in his memorable 1964 New York production of "Hamlet".

Gielgud was a notorious workaholic and single-mindedly focused on his craft. Beverley Nichols related how Gielgud returned from a village in late 1939, loaded down with newspapers and a worried look. Asked whether war had finally been declared with Germany, Gielgud replied: "'Oh, I don't know anything about that, but 'Gladys Cooper' has got the most terrible reviews."

Represented by the theatrical agency H. M. Tennent, whose managing director was the famous Hugh 'Binkie' Beaumont, Gielgud lost the romantic affections of John Perry to Beaumont (they were a committed couple until Beaumont's death). During World War II, acting without Gielgud's knowledge, Beaumont obtained an exemption from military service for Gielgud, who expected to be called up, but had to content himself with being a London fire watch warden. In the post-war theater, Gielgud abandoned the romantic roles that made him a box-office star in favor of character work. He was influenced in that direction by the 25-year-old Peter Brook, who directed him in Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure." (The other great Peter, Peter Hall, who founded the Royal Shakespeare Company, and later succeeded Laurence Olivier as director of the National Theatre, directed Gielgud as Prospero in "The Tempest" in 1973, the first production he directed for the NT on the South Bank.)

He became Sir John Gielgud when he was awarded a knighthood in the Coronation Honours list of June 1953. By this time, he had begun a long-term relationship with Paul Anstee. On October 21, 1953, Gielgud was arrested in Chelsea for soliciting a homosexual act in a public lavatory. Arraigned the next morning, he pleaded guilty, apologized to the court, and was fined ten pounds sterling. He had identified himself to the police as "Arthur Gielgud, 49, a clerk, of Cowley Street Westminster." Homosexuality was proscribed by the law in the UK, and Gielgud gave his less common birth name and a phony job description in the hopes that the press would not get wind of his pinch. The police made an attempt to prevent the press from learning of the incident, but in "Evening Standard" journalist was in the court that morning, and for the early afternoon edition, the paper came out with a headline "Sir John Gielgud fined: See your doctor the moment you leave here."

Publicly humiliated, Gielgud worried about how the West End audience would react the next time he appeared on stage. Gielgud was advised not to seek work in the United States for at least four years as he likely would be being refused entry by American immigration authorities. In a letter to Lillian Gish at the time (not revealed until after his death), Gielgud told her that he perhaps should have committed suicide. While Binkie Beaumont initially favored keeping Gielgud off the boards, Gielgud's brother Val, then head of BBC Radio, threatened the homosexual Beaumont with exposure if he kept his brother away from acting. A conference of his friends was called by Beaumont to determine how to best handle the crisis as Gielgud was scheduled to open in N. C. Hunter's play "A Day at the Sea" in the West End, which he was also directing. The "war council" included Laurence Olivier, his wife Vivien Leigh, Ralph Richardson, and Glen Byam Shaw, who was running the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-Upon-Avon. Only Olivier counseled him to postpone the play; the rest urged him to carry on. Gielgud heeded the advice of the majority, and went ahead with the production. Upon entering the stage the first night, the house was brought down by a standing ovation.

Outside the theater, the press whipped up a public backlash over the "homosexual menace." There were fears among the theater's gay community that there would be a police crackdown, leading choreographer Frederick Ashton to say of Gielgud, "He's ruined it for us all." So afraid was his lover Paul Anstee, that he burned all his letters. Gielgud's official biographer, Sheridan Morley, who withheld publication of his authorized biography until after Gielgud's death so as not to broach the subject of the arrest and Gielgud's sexuality during his lifetime, believes that the Gielgud arrest and brouhaha in the press likely were part of an organized campaign against homosexuality that had been festering in Britain since just before World War II.

By the mid-1950s, the traditional English stage was stagnating, as susceptible to an insurrection as the theater had been in the 1930s, when Gielgud's acting and direction had overthrown the old order. Gielgud's 1955 go at Shakespeare's "King Lear" was a failure, and his style of acting went out of fashion after the kitchen-sink theatrical revolution heralded by the Royal Court's May 1956 staging of John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger". Unlike Olivier, who reinvented himself with his characterization of Archie Rice in Osborne's The Entertainer (directed by kitchen-sink stalwart Tony Richardson), an era of rebellion against the cultural Establishment was at hand, which rendered the current lions of the stage passé. It was a new world in which Gielgud felt he had no place.

Gielgud stuck to what he knew. He created a solo recital of Shakespearean excerpts called "The Ages of Man" for the 1957 Edinburgh Festival. The recital proved extremely popular, and he toured with the show for a decade, winning a special Tony Award in 1958 for his staging of the show on Broadway. In the 1960s, he had a notable failure with his "Othello," and he was not a success in Peter Brook's 1968 staging of "Oedipus", two roles that Olivier had excelled in. Laurence Olivier, once his acolyte, was by this time considered the greatest actor in the English language, if not the world. He would become the first actor ennobled when he became Lord Olivier of Brighton in 1970. Gielgud, in contrast, had seemed, like their contemporary Ralph Richardson, to be old-fashioned and behind the times.

He was nominated for a Tony as Julian in Edward Albee's willfully obscure "Tiny Alice" in 1965, but Gielgud did not truly begin to transform himself into a contemporary actor until his appearances in Tony Richardson's 1967 film The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) and in Alan Bennett's 1968 play "40 Years On...." He continued to revitalize his reputation in 1970, when he appeared in David Storey's "Home," and in 1976, when he appeared in Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land." Along with his reclaimed reputation came an appointment as a Companion of Honour in 1977. His career renaissance was ratified by the winning of an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film Arthur (1981) in 1981.

Although he had appeared in approximately 80 films, his supercilious character did not make him a popular movie actor, or a particularly distinguished one, aside from his brilliant turn as Cassius in the film adaptation of Julius Caesar (1953) and his gem of a cameo as Clarence in Olivier's Richard III (1955). His genius remained reserved for the stage. (He had even turned down a film offer in the mid-1930s from Alexander Korda to film his great Hamlet.) As The Times eulogized after his death, "To a unique degree his greatest performances coincided with the greatest plays."

John Gielgud met his last love, Martin Hensler, at an exhibition at the Tate Gallery in the 1960s. They kept in touch, and Hensler moved in with Gielgud six years later. They remained a couple for over 30 years until Gielgud's death. Despite the publicity surrounding his 1953 arrest and the legalization of homosexuality in the UK in 1967, Gielgud did not talk publicly about his sexuality, so most of the public did not know that Gielgud was gay. Hensler, with Gielgud's approval, successful lobbied to have the 1988 program notes for Hugh Whitemore's play "Best of Friends" state that he and Gielgud had been a happy couple for many years, but it was not publicized by the press. That play proved to be Gielgud's final appearance in the theater.

Gielgud outlived his great contemporaries, Olivier and Richardson, the Three Knights of the Stage, by a decade. Benedict Nightingale wrote of the three, in 'The Times' (May 23, 2000) that, "Laurence Olivier was the most fiery and physically volatile, Ralph Richardson the earthiest and the quirkiest, but Gielgud was the most vocally exquisite, intellectually elegant and spiritually fine."

Sheridan Morley, his biographer, said: 'Since 1917, when he started in walk-on parts, he never had more than four weeks without work." In his career on stage, he had played every major Shakespearean role, including his favorite, Prospero in "The Tempest", which he later essayed for director Peter Greenaway in "Prospero's Books".

Gielgud could be seen as having made the career of his greatest acolyte, Laurence Olivier, his only rival for the title of Greatest Shakespearean Actor of the 20th Century, a contest most felt that Gielgud won due to the beauty of his phrasing and more cerebral interpretation of Shakespeare. (Olivier was generally considered the better actor in contemporary roles.) A great Richard II (as well as Hamlet), the generous Gielgud made his Bolingbroke possible through both his mentorship of the younger actor at the New Theatre during the 1935 season (where they alternated the roles of Romeo and Mercutio, with Gielgud getting the better reviews), and by reinventing Shakespeare as commercial theater in the 20th century. The modern, revitalized Shakespearean stage willingly embraced the more physical Olivier.

Director Sir Peter Hall, in eulogizing the great man, said. "His work at the Vic in the 1930s, then with his own company, was trailblazing. He was not an old-style actor wanting inferior actors around him so he would look the star, which was what happened in a lot of companies. He wanted to be around people who were better than he was. He believed in that kind of humility. His companies were very happy places, with one humorous qualification - that mercurial mind meant as a director he was always changing it."

Thus, Gielgud's greatest legacy was his work as an actor-manager in the 1930s and 1940s, a time when the commercial West End theater was generally frivolous and its Shakespeare as caught in amber as a D'Oyly Carte production of a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. Gielgud created classical companies that laid the foundations for the great renaissance of British theater that blossomed after the War, doing the groundwork at the New Theatre in 1935, at the Queen's Theatre in the 1937/38 seasons, and at the Haymarket in 1944. His companies featured in repertory Shakespeare, Sheridan, Congreve, and Chekhov, and his patronage of the design team Motley reinvented the look of British theatrical staging. Aside from Olivier, who went on to found the National Theatre, George Devine founded the English Stage Company in 1956, and Anthony Quayle and Glen Byam Shaw revitalized Stratford during the 1950s.

Without Gielgud, those paragons of the modern English theater, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, likely would not have come into existence. 'Percy' Harris, one of the Motley theatrical design team, said, "I think he single-handedly put English theater back on the map. Larry [Olivier] gets all the credit and John doesn't, which I think is a sign of John's innate modesty."

Gielgud wrote many books in his career, starting with a 1939 autobiography entitled "Early Stages." This was followed by "John Gielgud: An Actor's Biography in Pictures" in 1952, "Stage Directions" in 1963, "Distinguished Company" in 1972, the new autobiography "An Actor in His Time" in 1979 (revised 1989), "Backward Glances: Part One, Time for Reflection: Part Two, Distinguished Company" in 1989, "Teach Yourself" in 1990, and a primer for Shakespearean actors, "Shakespeare - Hit or Miss?" in 1991 (re-published as "Acting Shakespeare" in 1992). In 1994, "Notes from the Gods: Playgoing in the Twenties," based on Gielgud's annotated theater programs from the London theatrical productions from 1919-25, was published. The lifetime awards began to pile up: a BAFTA fellowship award for his lifetime contribution to show business in 1992, the renaming of the Globe Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue in London's West End as the Gielgud Theatre in 1994, and his appointment to the Order of Merit in 1996.

Gielgud and Hensler lived together in his later years at their country house, South Pavilion, at Wotton Underwood, near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, where he died "simply of old age" on 21 May 2000, at 96. That night, the lights at the Gielgud Theatre and 12 others in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group were dimmed for three minutes in tribute to the passing of the man acclaimed as the greatest Shakespearean actor of the century.

At a small memorial service in Buckinghamshire, Sir Alec Guinness, Sir John Mills, Dame Maggie Smith and Lord Richard Attenborough were among those whom paid their respects to the legendary actor. His body was later cremated at a ceremony witnessed by a small group of those closest to him. A year after Gielgud's death, an archive of letters chronicling his personal and professional life was bequeathed to the nation and housed at the British Library. "Style", Gielgud once said, "is knowing what sort of play you're in."

Alec Guinness was an English actor of stage and screen, his career spanning over sixty years. His best known screen works are his starring roles in several of the Ealing comedies between 1949 and 1957 (most notably as eight members of the same family in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), his Oscar-nominated turn as bank clerk turned bullion robber in The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), an inventor who never gives up in The Man in the White Suit (1951), and as one of five oddball criminals planning a bank robbery in The Ladykillers (1955)); his six collaborations over 38 years with director David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), (for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor), Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), General Yevgraf Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984); his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy (for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor); and his starring role as George Smiley in the television adaptations of John le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and Smiley's People (1982).

His gallery of notable characters (both fictional and historical) also includes Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in The Mudlark (1950), an enterprising rogue in The Promoter (1952), a sleuthing priest in The Detective (1954), an eccentric London artist in The Horse's Mouth (1958) (for which he was Oscar-nominated as a screenwriter), a wayward Scottish army officer in Tunes of Glory (1960), the ghost of Jacob Marley in Scrooge (1970), King Charles I in Cromwell (1970), the title role in Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973), a blind butler in Murder by Death (1976), a survivor of the Titanic disaster in Raise the Titanic (1980), and a return to Dickens' territory (and a final Oscar nomination) as William Dorrit in Little Dorrit (1987).

In 1959, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. In 1980 he received the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement.

Guinness died on 5 August 2000, from liver cancer, at Midhurst in West Sussex.

Academy Award-winning, legendary English actress - who maintained her status in the British acting elite for decades. Made a Dame of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1956. Almost always on stage, she appeared rarely in film, her first being The Wandering Jew (1933). On stage she was cast in many a Shakespearean role, but in film she usually played sympathetic characters. She won an Oscar for A Passage to India (1984), and her last TV film was She's Been Away (1989).  She died from a stroke.

It has been rightly suggested that Dame Ninette de Valois is one of the most important women of the century. It was due to her drive and ambition that the modern English ballet was created. In that respect she changed history single handed. Born in Ireland, young Ninette (her stage name was her mother's suggestion) came to England aged 7 to study dance.

At that time (1905) the only ballet seen in England was touring Russian or French companies. Inspired by a perfromance of the Ballets Russes under Diaghilev, she joined them in 1923. By the mid 1920's she was convinced that Britain needed and should be capable of producing it's own National Ballet and she set about working towards it with a single minded determination.

By 1926 she opened her first school in London, called the Academy of Choreographic Arts. By the early 1930s she had, with the help of Lillian Bayliss, the director of The Old Vic that the theater needed it's own ballet company and school. With help from Lillian Bayliss, Madame (as she was known by her pupils), bought the old Sadler's Wells Theatre and opened her new Ballet School there.

As well as starting the new theatre and ballet school she also found time to choreograph such works as The Rake's Pregress (based on the Hogarth prints) for the new company. She soon attracted quite a few talented people around her including the young Frederick Ashton.

By 1934 the new theatre and ballet school were in full operation and they produced full length ballets such as Giselle and Copellia (featuring Alicia Markova). That year a young dancer may have been found in the ranks by the name of Margot Fonteyn. de Valois had realised from the beginning that the only way to make a truly British Ballet was to have a complete system in place from school to stage.

She had developed what came to be known as the English Ballet style of narrative, lyrical ballet and this was taught in the school. She was also still an innovative choreograph such innovative works as Checkmate (1937). During the years of the second world war they toured extensively and became a major morale booster.

For all her work Ninette was created a Dame of the Order of the British Empire in 1951. In 1955 she started a new ballet school in White Lodge, Richmond Park, Surrey. Away from the busy metropolis the Royal Ballet (as they had become) had a perfect home here. Although retired since 1963, Dame Ninette is still a powerful force in the world of ballet.

Kenneth MacMillan was born on 11 December 1929 in Dunfermline, Scotland, UK. He was an actor and writer, known for Romeo and Juliet (1966), The Julie Andrews Show (1959) and Little Nikita (1988). He was married to Deborah Williams. He died on 29 October 1992 in Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, England, UK.

Actor and director Sam Wanamaker was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, Molly (Babell) and Maurice Wattenmaker, a tailor. He studied at Drake University, IA, then trained at Goodman Theatre, Chicago, worked with summer stock companies in Chicago as an actor and director, and made his London debut in 1952. In 1957, he was appointed director of the New Shakespeare Theatre, Liverpool, and in 1959 joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre company at Stratford-upon-Avon. He produced or directed several works at Covent Garden and elsewhere in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations in 1974. He worked both as director and actor in films and television, his appearances included The Spiral Staircase (1975), Private Benjamin (1980), Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), and Baby Boom (1987).

Married to Charlotte Holland, his daughter is actress Zoë Wanamaker.

Harold Pinter, the 2005 Nobel Laureate for Literature, was born October 10, 1930, in London's working-class Hackney district to Hyman and Frances Pinter, Eastern European Jews who had immigrated to the United Kingdom from Portugal. Hyman (known as "Jack") was a tailor specializing in women's clothing and Frances was a homemaker. The Pinters, whose families hailed from Odessa and Poland in the Russian Empire, were part of a wave of Jewish emigration to the UK at the turn of the last century. It was a community that revered learning and culture. The Pinter family was close, and young Harold was traumatized when, at the outbreak of World War II, he was evacuated from London to Cornwall with other London children for a year to avoid becoming casualties of German aerial bombing.

Pinter has said that his encounter with anti-Semitism while growing up was the fuse that ignited the organic process leading him to becoming a playwright. As the Nobel Prize citation attests, Pinter developed into the greatest English dramatist of the post-World War II era. The young Pinter studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Central School of Speech and Drama. In 1950 he published several poems and began working as a professional actor. Under the stage name David Baron, he toured the Republic of Ireland with Anew McMaster's Shakespearean repertory company in 1951-52. Significantly for Pinter's future, 1951 not only marked the debut of his career as a professional actor but also marked the first performance of future Nobel Literature Laureate Samuel Beckett's absurdist masterpiece "Waiting for Godot." He next appeared with Sir Donald Wolfit's theatrical company at the King's Theatre, Hammersmith, for the 1953- 54 season before becoming a player with various provincial repertory companies, including the Birmingham Rep, until he gave himself over full-time to playwriting in 1959.

Two significant events that would change Great Britain forever occurred during his apprenticeship in provincial rep: (1) the Suez Crisis of 1955 that shattered the UK's pretensions to empire in a post-colonial world and doomed the imperial generations represented by Prime Minister Anthony Eden and his mentor Winston Churchill, and (2) the 1956 premiere of John Osborne's play "Look Back in Anger." The shattering of the United Kingdom's complacency over imperialism meant that many successful people of Pinter's generation, who normally would have become Tories upon achieving some modicum of success, were disillusioned and drifted towards Labour and the left. No longer would a working- class person, if he so chose, have to be ashamed or stymied if \eschewing becoming middle-class or bourgeois. Osborne's play was the seminal work of the "kitchen-sink" school of drama that would dominate English theater for a decade, in which working-class life and struggles were dramatized. The hegemony of this school of theater was such that for the first time, a working-class or provincial accent became something treasured, something to be proud of, as the former world was set firmly upon its head. Even the great Laurence Olivier turned his back on the commercial theater to assay Osbourne's Archie Rice, a down-at-the-heels music hall performer, in "The Entertainer" (1957).

The kitchen-sink drama was a movement that Pinter would not be a part of, though it did open the doors for working-class writers who, unlike the working class-born Noël Coward, had no interest in becoming bourgeois. The other major element in the cultural milieu that forged Pinter was the Cold War, the absurdity of facing doomsday everyday under the threat of The Bomb (the USSR had acquired the means to produce a bomb through its atomic spy ring and exploded its first A-bomb in 1949, thus ending the US monopoly on nuclear weapons and making the Korean war, the suppression of an East Berlin uprising and the squashing of the Hungarian Revolution practical, if not possible). The Cold War gave legitimacy to the rise of the police state, not in totalitarian countries but in the use of police-state tactics in the western industrial democracies. To quote American poet' Charles Bukowski', this was an era marked by "War All The Time," not between two superpower behemoths but in everyday human relations, poisoned as they were by the Cold War climate of absurdity, paranoia and imminent holocaust.

In 1953 the accused "atomic spies" Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in the United States when President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man who had overseen the liberation of Europe as Supreme Allied Commander fighting the Nazi totalitarian menace, had refused clemency for even Ethel, the mother of two small boys. It was a domestic drama -- a woman's loyalty to her husband, her loss of not only her life but the Issac-like evocative sacrifice of any normal life for her two children when Eisenhower-Jehovah refused to stay the executioner's hand -- that had combined with the felicities of affairs of state and world power politics. The question of whether they were guilty or innocent--not proven beyond a doubt in 1951, when they had been convicted in a trial that was compared by many to the Stalinist show-trials that had occurred in the Soviet Union and still occurred in the satellite countries of the Warsaw Pact after World War II - gave rise to an overwhelming fundamental question: What is real? Reality, as Hannah Arendt had put it in "The Human Condition," is socially defined; that is a given. But how about when that reality no longer makes sense, when the individual cannot partake of the consensus demanded of him in the 1950s, whether conservative, middle-class, haute bourgeoisie or radical left as dictated by some flaming Red party boss - a person struggling with his own life? How does he answer the question: What is real? It is a question that Pinter took upon himself to answer, and answered by showing us there is no answer. In this quest, a genius arrived on the world stage in the form of a player who decided to craft his own words, for himself and his post-Holocaust, pre-Holocaust audience. When life stops making sense, as it did in the 1940s when the global war against fascism left 50 million dead and the modern industrial state was tasked with the exigencies of mass- murder, and as it did in the 1950s when, under the aegis of combating another totalitarian system a domestic fascism in kind if not degree arose in the Anglo-Saxon countries with their great gravital pull towards conformity within a shell of consumerism, it still behooves a human being to try to understand the human condition.

In 1957 Bristol University staged Pinter's first play "The Room." He had told a friend who worked in Bristol University's drama department an idea he had for a play. The friend was so enamored of the idea that he commissioned the work, with the proviso that a script be ready within a week. Though he didn't believe he could meet his friend's demands, Pinter wrote the one-act play in four days. "The Room" had all the hallmarks of what would become known as "Pinteresque," in that it had a mundane situation that gradually filled with menace and mystery through the author's deliberate omission of an explanation or motivation for the action on stage. It is ironic perhaps that an actor would rid his script of motivation as "motivation" is the Holy Grail of inwardly-directed actors such as those tutored in "The Method" in America, but it was emblematic of the times that stated motivations frequently masked other, starker, more id-like drives in people or in nation-states that were beyond human comprehension in terms of being rational. Modern society had become irrational, and motivations post-Freud could be understood as a manifestation of Thanatos, the Death Instinct. Imminent violence and power plays would become other leitmotifs of Pinter's oeuvre.

Pinter wrote a second one-act play in 1957, "The Dumb Waiter," an absurdist drama concerning two hit men employed by a secret organization to kill an unknown victim. It was with this play that Pinter added an element of black comedy, mostly through his brilliant use of dialog, which not only elucidated the killers' growing anxiety but underscored the very absurdity of their situation. The play would not be performed until 1960, after the staging of his first two full-length plays, one a flop, and one a hit. His first full-length play, "The Birthday Party," debuted at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge in 1958. In the play the apathetic Stanley, the denizen of a dilapidated boarding house, is visited by two men. The audience never learns their motivation, but knows that Stanley is terrified of them. They organize a birthday party for Stanley, who insists that it is not his birthday. Pinter is following in the footsteps of the great absurdist Samuel Beckett in that he steadfastly refuses to give clear motivations to his characters, or rational explanations for the sake of his audience (Pinter and Beckett became friends). The play, now considered a masterpiece, flopped on its initial London run after being savaged by critics. It was revived after Pinter's second full-length play, 1960's "The Caretaker," established him as a major force in the English-language theater.

His early plays were rooted in the absurdism that became the major theatrical paradigm on the European stage in the third quarter of the 20th century, after the horrors of the war and the Holocaust. The early plays that made his reputation such as "The Homecoming" (1964) and his middle-period work such as "No Man's Land" (1976) have been called "comedies of menace." Typically, they use what at first seems like an innocent situation and develop it into an absurd and threatening environment through actions that usually are inexplicable to the audience and sometimes even to the other characters in the play. A Pinter drama is dark and claustrophobic. His language is full of menacing pauses. The lives of Pinter's characters usually are revealed to be stunted by guilt and horror. The duality and absurdity of Pinter's theatrical world-view gave rise to the adjective "Pinteresque," which took its place next to "Kafkaesque," a product of the horrors of the first quarter of the century (Pinter would write the screenplay for an adaption of Franz Kafka's "The Trial".)

Beginning in the 1960s, Pinter further enhanced his reputation as a writer with his screenplays, particular his work with Joseph Losey in The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967) (Losey planned an adaptation of Marcel Proust's "Le Temps Retrouve" and commissioned Pinter to write the screenplay. The film was never made by Losey, but Pinter's screenplay was subsequently published to great acclaim). His later screenplays, including his last produced work with Losey, The Go-Between (1971), are, ironically, noted for their clarity. He was twice nominated for the Academy Award as a screenwriter, for his adaptation of John Fowles' labyrinthine novel into the film The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981) and for Betrayal (1983), his adaptation of his own play. Such was the respect that Pinter was held that Elia Kazan, one of the great film directors, complained in his autobiography "A Life" (1988) that The Last Tycoon (1976) producer Sam Spiegel had such reverence for Pinter that he would not let Kazan change his script.

After the great plays of his early and mid-period, Pinter became more overtly political. His later plays, which generally are shorter than the plays from the period in which he made his reputation, typically address political subjects and often are allegories on oppression. In the late 1970s Pinter became more outspoken on political issues and is decidedly of the left. He is passionately committed to human rights and is not shy about bringing examples of oppression from client states sponsored by the Anglo-Saxon democracies to the public's attention. In 2002 Pinter experienced what he described as a "personal nightmare" when he had to undergo chemotherapy to treat a case of cancer of the esophagus. The ordeal, which has been ongoing for three years, triggered a personal metamorphosis in the man. "I've been through the valley of the shadow of death," Pinter explained about his quickening. "While in many respects I have certain characteristics that I had, I'm also a very changed man."

In early 2005 Pinter declared in a radio interview that he was retiring as a dramatist in favor of writing poetry: "I think I've stopped writing plays now, but I haven't stopped writing poems. I've written 29 plays. Isn't that enough?" Pinter has become an outspoken critic of war. He was a bitter critic of the US-led intervention against Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia during President Bill Clinton's administration and an even harsher critic of the US-led war in Iraq. The fiercely anti- war Pinter has accused President George W. Bush of being a "mass-murderer" and has called British Prime Minister Tony Blair a "deluded idiot" for supporting US foreign policy. Pinter claimed immediately after the 9/11 attacks on New York City and the Pentagon that they were a requited revenge for the destruction wrought on Afghanistan and Iraq by US imperialism and its anti-Taliban policies and sanctions on Iraq. He has publicly denounced the retaliatory U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the unprovoked 2003 invasion of Iraq. Pinter likens the Bush administration and Bush's America to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, claiming the US is bent on world hegemony. Controversially, he has declared that the only difference between Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union is that the US is more hypocritical and has better public relations.

One cannot fault Pinter, in the political ring, for being inconsistent or for jumping on a bandwagon. The man, as well as the artist, is a person that sticks to his convictions. The award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Pinter just after he celebrated his 75th birthday was completely unexpected by pundits handicapping the award. Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk and Syrian poet Adonis were considered the front-runners, as European writers recently had dominated the award (Pinter's Nobel Prize makes it nine out of ten times in the past ten years that a European writer has won, and the second time in the past five years an English writer has banged the gong), and it was felt the Academy would recognize a writer from another continent, particularly one from Asia Minor. Thus, the award can be seen as a not-so-veiled criticism of the United States in general and President George W. Bush in particular by the Swedish Academy. Because of Pinter's renouncing of the form of which he was a master and his anointment of himself as a poet, in light of his volume of poetry, "War" (2003) that denounces the Iraq War frequently in vulgar, raw and unrythmic poetry that poses no threat to William Butler Yeats or W.H. Auden or Robert Frost or Stevens, one must consider that the Swedish Academy was giving the world's highest prize for literature at least in part to a poet whose latest work was fiercely anti-American and anti-imperialist.

Despite being highly controversial, Pinter -- who was appointed a Commander of the British Empire in 1966 (one step down from a knighthood, an honor he subsequently turned down) -- was named a Companion of Honour in 2002, an honor that does not carry a title. In addition to writing poetry, acting and directing in the theater, Pinter serves as the chairman of the Gaieties Cricket Club, an affiliate of he Club Cricket Conference. He also is active in the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, an organization that supports Fidel Castro, who remains the #1 bugaboo of the United States after Islamic terrorists, just slightly ahead of fellow hemispheric boogeyman Hugo Chávez, a recent arriviste on the world stage. He also is a member of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, an organization that appeals for the freedom of Slobodan Milosevic on the grounds that NATO's war against Milosevic's Yugoslavia was unjustified under international law.

Margaret Harris is known for Amnesia (2000), Exit 8A (2004) and The Masterpiece (2001).

David Mirvish was born in 1945 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is known for Dear Evan Hansen (2021), An Evening with Sir Peter Ustinov (1995) and Focus Ontario (2004).

Ed Mirvish was born on 24 July 1914 in Colonial Beach, Virginia, USA. He is known for Vida Y Danza Cuba - Life & Dance (2008), An Evening with Sir Peter Ustinov (1995) and Omnibus (1967). He was married to Anne Maklin. He died on 11 July 2007 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Hall directed his first play while he was still a student. He soon achieved prominence as a stage director. He began his occasional film work in 1968, with Work Is a Four Letter Word (1968).

He was the Artistic Director of The Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon from 1960-68. He took over direction of the National Theatre from Lord Laurence Olivier in 1973, shortly after leaving the RSC. He was knighted and later known as Sir Peter Hall.

Rupert Rhymes was born on 24 June 1940 in Bath, Somerset, England, UK. He is known for Rusalka (1986). He was married to Sue Chennells. He died on 12 September 2023 in England, UK.

Samuel Alexander Mendes was born on August 1, 1965 in Reading, England, UK to parents James Peter Mendes, a retired university lecturer, and Valerie Helene Mendes, an author who writes children's books. Their marriage didn't last long, James divorced Sam's mother in 1970 when Sam was just 5-years-old. Sam was educated at Cambridge University and joined the Chichester Festival Theatre following his graduation in 1987. Afterwards, he directed Judi Dench in "The Cherry Orchard", for which he won a Critics Circle Award for Best Newcomer. He then joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he directed such productions as "Troilus and Cressida" with Ralph Fiennes and "Richard III". In 1992, he became artistic director of the reopened Donmar Warehouse in London, where he directed such productions as "The Glass Menagerie" and the revival of the musical "Cabaret", which earned four Tony Awards including one for Best Revival of a Musical. He also directed "The Blue Room" starring Nicole Kidman. In 1999, he got the chance to direct his first feature film, American Beauty (1999). The movie earned 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director for Mendes, which is a rare feat for a first-time film director.

Dame Judi Dench was born Judith Olivia Dench in York, England, to Eleanora Olive (Jones), who was from Dublin, Ireland, and Reginald Arthur Dench, a doctor from Dorset, England. She attended Mount School in York, and studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, and at Old Vic Theatre. She is a ten-time BAFTA winner including Best Actress in a Comedy Series for A Fine Romance (1981) in which she appeared with her husband, Michael Williams, and Best Supporting Actress in A Handful of Dust (1988) and A Room with a View (1985). She received an ACE award for her performance in the television series Mr & Mrs Edgehill (1985). She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1970, a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1988 and a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in 2005.

Alan Bennett is an award-winning dramatist and screenwriter who is best known as a member of Beyond the Fringe (1964) (a satirical review that was a hit on both the London stage and on Broadway and featured fellow members Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore) and for his plays The Madness of King George (1994) and The History Boys (2006). Bennett and Miller also collaborated on the TV sketch show On the Margin (1966).

In 1995, Bennett was nominated for an Academy Award for his adaptation of his own play "The Madness of King George." He has declined a knighthood and an honorary doctorate from Oxford University.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest stage and screen actors both in his native Great Britain and internationally, twice nominated for the Oscar and recipient of every major theatrical award in the UK and US, Ian Murray McKellen was born on May 25, 1939 in Burnley, Lancashire, England, to Margery Lois (Sutcliffe) and Denis Murray McKellen, a civil engineer and lay preacher. He is of Scottish, Northern Irish, and English descent. During his early childhood, his parents moved with Ian and his older sister, Jean, to the mill town of Wigan. It was in this small town that young Ian rode out World War II. He soon developed a fascination with acting and the theatre, which was encouraged by his parents. They would take him to plays, those by William Shakespeare, in particular. The amateur school productions fostered Ian's growing passion for theatre.

When Ian was of age to begin attending school, he made sure to get roles in all of the productions. At Bolton School in particular, he developed his skills early on. Indeed, his first role in a Shakespearian play was at Bolton, as Malvolio in "Twelfth Night". Ian soon began attending Stratford-upon-Avon theatre festivals, where he saw the greats perform: Laurence Olivier, Wendy Hiller, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Paul Robeson. He continued his education in English Drama, but soon it fell by the wayside as he concentrated more and more on performing. He eventually obtained his Bachelor of Arts in 1961, and began his career in earnest.

McKellen began working in theatre over the next few years. Very few people knew of Ian's homosexuality; he saw no reason to go public, nor had he told his family. They did not seem interested in the subject and so he saw no reason to bring it up. In 1988, Ian publicly came out of the closet on the BBC Radio 4 program, while discussing Margaret Thatcher's "Section 28" legislation, which made the promotion of homosexuality as a family relationship by local authorities an offense. It was reason enough for McKellen to take a stand. He has been active in the gay rights movement ever since.

Ian resides in Limehouse, where he has also lived with his former long-time partner Sean Mathias. The two men have also worked together on the film Bent (1997) as well as in exquisite stage productions. To this day, McKellen works mostly in theatre, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990 for his efforts in the arts. However, he has managed to make several quite successful forays into film. He has appeared in several productions of Shakespeare's works including his well received Richard III (1995), and in a variety of other movies. However, it has only been recently that his star has finally begun to shine in the eyes of North American audiences. Roles in various films, Cold Comfort Farm (1995), Apt Pupil (1998) and Gods and Monsters (1998), riveted audiences. The latter, in particular, created a sensation in Hollywood, and McKellen's role garnered him several of awards and nominations, including a Golden Globe and an Oscar nod. McKellen, as he continues to work extensively on stage, he always keeps in 'solidifying' his 'role' as Laurence Olivier's worthy 'successor' in the best sense too, such as King Lear (2008) / King Lear (2008) directed by Trevor Nunn and in a range of other staggering performances full of generously euphoric delight that have included "Peter Pan" and Noël Coward's "Present Laughter", as well as Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" and Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land" (National Theatre Live: No Man's Land (2016)), both in acclaimed productions brilliantly directed by Sean Mathias.

McKellen found mainstream success with his performance as Magneto in X-Men (2000) and its sequels. His largest mark on the big screen may be as Gandalf in "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, which he reprised in "The Hobbit" trilogy. He also reprised the role of 'King Lear' with new artistic perspectives in National Theatre Live: King Lear (2018) offering an invaluable mesmerizing experience as a natural force of stage - and screen - of infinite generosity through his unsurpassable interpretation of the titanically vulnerable king.

John Tomlinson was born on 22 September 1946 in Accrington, Lancashire, England, UK. He is an actor, known for Das Rheingold (1992), Parsifal (1992) and Le nozze di Figaro - Die Hochzeit des Figaro (1991).

Andrew Lloyd Webber is arguably the most successful composer of our time. He is best known for stage and film adaptations of his musicals Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Cats (1994), Evita (1996), and The Phantom of the Opera (2004).

He was born on March 22, 1948, in South Kensington in London, England, the first of two sons of William Lloyd Webber, an organist and composer. His mother, Jean Johnstone, was a pianist and violinist. Young Andrew Lloyd Webber learned to play various musical instruments at home and began composing at an early age. He continued his music studies at Westminster School, where his father was an organist. At the age of 9, young Andrew was able to play the organ and assisted his father during performances. In 1964 he went to Oxford University as a Queens Scholar of history.

In 1965 he met lyricist Tim Rice and dropped out of school to compose musicals and pop songs. In 1968 he had his first success with the West End production of 'Joseph and the Amasing Techicolor Dreamcoat'. From the 1960s to 2000s Lloyd Webber has been constantly updating his style as an eclectic blend of musical genres ranging from classical to rock, pop, and jazz, and with inclusion of electro-acoustic music and choral-like numbers in his musicals.

Andrew Lloyd Webber shot to fame in 1971 with the opening of his rock opera 'Jesus Christ Superstar'. His next successful collaboration with Tim Rice was the musical biopic 'Evita', based on the true story of Eva Peron of Argentina. Andrew Lloyd Webber has been constantly updating the genre of musical theatre. In 1981 he delivered 'Cats', based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and other poems by T.S. Eliot. It was produced at New London Theatre, where stage was designed as a giant junkyard with large-scale bottles and cans scattered around a huge tire representing a playground for cats dressed in exotic costumes who would come and go through the aisles. The record-breaking production of 'Cats' was on stage for 21 seasons, from 1981 - 2002, and became one of the most popular musicals of all time. It played the total of 8,949 performances in London and 7,485 in New York.

In 1986 Andrew Lloyd Webber released his most successful musical, 'The Phantom of the Opera', based on the eponymous book by Gaston Leroux with the English lyrics by Charles Hart. 'The Phantom of the Opera' became the highest grossing entertainment event of all time, with total worldwide gross of 3,3 billion dollars and attendance of 80 million. It is also the longest running Broadway musical of all time and the most financially successful Broadway show in history. 'The Phantom of the Opera' was translated into several languages and was produced in more than twenty countries as "clones" of the original production, using similar staging, direction, costumes concept and sets design.

He was knighted Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1992, and was created an honorary life peer in 1997 as Baron Lloyd-Webber, of Syndmonton in the County of Hampshire. He won the 1996 Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song for Evita (1996), and received two more Oscar nominations. Among his other awards are seven Tonys and three Grammys, including his 1986 Grammy Award for Requiem in the category of best classical composition. In 2006 Andrew Lloyd Webber was Awarded Kennedy Center Honors. He owns seven London theatres, which he also restored. Outside of his entertainment career he developed a passion for collecting Pre-Raphaelite paintings and Victorian art. He was married three times and has five children. He is residing in England.

Andrew Lloyd Webber is currently working on his new opera titled 'Master and Margarita' based on the eponymous novel by Mikhail A. Bulgakov.

Alan Ayckbourn was born on 12 April 1939 in London, England, UK. He is a writer and director, known for A Chorus of Disapproval (1989), By Jeeves (2001) and Season's Greetings (2020). He has been married to Heather Stoney since September 1997. They have two children. He was previously married to Christine Helen Roland May.

One of the world's most famous and distinguished actresses, Dame Maggie Smith was born Margaret Natalie Smith in Essex. Her Scottish mother, Margaret (Hutton), worked as a secretary, and her English father, Nathaniel Smith, was a teacher at Oxford University. Smith has been married twice: to actor Robert Stephens and to playwright Beverley Cross. Her marriage to Stephens ended in divorce in 1974. She was married to Cross until his death in 1998. She had two sons with Stephens, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens who are also actors.

Maggie Smith's career began at the Oxford Playhouse in the 1950s. She made her film debut in 1956 as one of the party guests in Child in the House (1956). She has since performed in over sixty films and television series with some of the most prominent actors and actresses in the world. These include: Othello (1965) with Laurence Olivier, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), California Suite (1978) with Michael Caine and Jane Fonda, A Room with a View (1985), Richard III (1995) with Ian McKellen and Jim Broadbent, Franco Zeffirelli's Tea with Mussolini (1999) with Judi Dench, Joan Plowright and Cher and Gosford Park (2001) with Kristin Scott Thomas and Clive Owen, directed by Robert Altman. Maggie Smith has also been nominated for an Oscar six times and won twice, for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) and California Suite (1978).

Smith later appeared in the very successful 'Harry Potter' franchise as the formidable Professor McGonagall as well as in Julian Fellowes' ITV drama series, Downton Abbey (2010) (2010-2011) as the Dowager Countess of Grantham.