Years active 1951-1990 Name Jill Bennett | Role British actress | |
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Full Name Nora Noel Jill Bennett Education Royal Academy of Dramatic Art Movies The Sheltering Sky, For Your Eyes Only, The Nanny, The Charge of the Light, The Skull Similar People | ||
Jill Bennett (24 December 1931 – 4 October 1990) was an English actress, and the fourth wife of playwright John Osborne.
Contents
Early life
She was born in Penang, the Straits Settlements, to British parents, educated at Prior's Field School, 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 The Long Dark Hall (1951) with Rex Harrison.
Career
Bennett made many appearances in British films including Lust for Life (1956), The Criminal (1960), The Nanny (1965), The Skull (1965), Inadmissible Evidence (1968), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), Julius Caesar (1970), I Want What I Want (1972), Mister Quilp (1975), Full Circle (1977) and Britannia Hospital (1982). She also appeared in the Bond film For Your Eyes Only (1981) as a world-renowned ice skating coach, Lady Jane (1986) and Hawks (1988). Her final film performance was in The Sheltering Sky (1990).
She made forays into television, such as roles in Play for Today (Country, 1981), with Wendy Hiller, and as the colourful Lady Grace Fanner in John Mortimer's adaptation of his own novel, Paradise Postponed (1985). Among several roles, Osborne wrote the character of Annie in his play The Hotel in Amsterdam (1968) for her. But Bennett's busy schedule prevented her from playing the role until it was screened on television in 1971.
She co-starred with Rachel Roberts in the Alan Bennett television play The Old Crowd (1979), directed by Lindsay Anderson.
Personal life
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 John Osborne. She and Osborne divorced acrimoniously in 1978. She had no children.
Death
She died by suicide in October 1990, aged 58, having long suffered from depression and the brutalising effects of her marriage to Osborne (according to Osborne's biographer). She did this by taking an overdose of Quinalbarbitone. Osborne, who was subject during her life to a restraining order regarding written comments about her, immediately wrote a vituperative chapter about her to be added to the second volume of his autobiography. The chapter, in which he rejoiced at her death, caused great controversy.
In 1992, Bennett's ashes, along with those of her friend, the actress Rachel Roberts (who also committed suicide, in 1980), were scattered by their friend Lindsay Anderson, on the waters of the River Thames in London. Anderson, with several of the two actresses' professional colleagues and friends, took a boat trip down the River Thames, and the ashes were scattered while musician Alan Price sang the song "Is That All There Is?" The event was included in Anderson's autobiographical BBC documentary Is That All There Is? (1992).
Theatre career
Radio theatre
Masha in The Three Sisters/TRI SESTRY, BBC Home Service Radio 1965. Directed by John Tyneman. Cast included Paul Scofield, Ian McKellen, Lynn Redgrave and Wilfrid Lawson.