LEGEND LOST

Joan Plowright, Renowned Actress and Widow of Laurence Olivier, Dies at 95

The British actress won a Tony Award, two Golden Globes, and was nominated for both an Oscar and an Emmy.

The renowned British actress Joan Plowright, who was married to the stage legend Laurence Olivier for 28 years, died on Thursday aged 95. She passed in her native England, her daughter said, at a retirement home for actors in the country’s south. A cause of death was not released, but she was surrounded by loved ones. Plowright was a winner of a Tony Award, two Golden Globes, and earned nominations for an Oscar and an Emmy. Her only Oscar nomination came for 1991’s Enchanted April, for which she won the Golden Globe for best supporting actress. At the same ceremony, she won another Globe for her role in HBO’s 1992 biopic Stalin. Along with her husband, who died in 1989, she did much to revitalize the United Kingdom’s theatrical scene post-World War II. Plowright shared three children with Olivier: Richard, born in 1961, Tamsin, born in 1963, and Julie-Kate, born in 1966. She worked until she physically could not anymore, retiring in 2014 after being deemed legally blind. That career-ending condition came a decade after he was made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II. “She enjoyed a long and illustrious career across theater, film, and TV over seven decades until blindness made her retire,” her family said. “We are so proud of all Joan did and who she was as a loving and deeply inclusive human being.” It was announced Friday that theaters across London will dim their lights for two minutes at 7 p.m. on Tuesday to honor Plowright.