Widow’s Peak

Chris Hallam profiles the stage and screen career of Dame Joan Plowright

- Chris Hallam

Connoisseurs of English theatre would have found little to enjoy in the 1993 Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbuster Last Action Hero. Admittedly one scene saw the Austrian-born ex-bodybuilder Schwarzenegger improbably attempting Hamlet (“Hey Claudius! You killed my father! Big mistake!”) but the film – which, in fairness, was packed with clever references rarely seen in such films at the time – went down badly with both audiences and critics alike.

Eagle-eyed viewers may have recognised the actress playing an English teacher desperately trying to interest her class in the work of the great actor Sir Laurence Olivier, however (“You might remember him as Zeus in Clash of the Titans”). For she was Joan Plowright, not only the widow of the great Lord Olivier but a formidable actress in her own right.

Joan Plowright had been born in the market town of Brigg, north Lincolnshire in October 1929 in the same week as the Wall Street Crash. Her father had been a journalist and newspaper editor. Joan’s younger brother, David Plowright (19302006), followed his father into journalism, eventually becoming chairman of Granada Television in the 1980s.

Like her brother, Joan attended Scunthorpe Grammar School but would ultimately follow a different path in life. In her teens, she was impressed (as many were) by Olivier’s powerful performance in the 1944 film version of Shakespeare’s Henry V. When the war was over, she embarked upon a career in acting herself, making her stage debut in Croydon in 1948 and her London debut in 1954.

By the mid-1950s, she had become strongly associated with the Royal Court Theatre, known for its radical spirt and groundbreaking plays, notably Look Back in Anger by John Osborne.