Award-winning British actress Joan Plowright, widow of Laurence Olivier, dead at 95

Acting is an outlet for comedy and grief, and all the characters inside you,

She celebrated her retirement in a series of onstage anecdotal conversations in 2014 with the director Richard Digby Day ... she said; and, now almost totally blind,

I’m beginning. I’m beginning!”

At the end of a blazing tirade lambasting her own family for their ignorance and conservatism, Plowright’s Beatie cried out, said Tynan, with the wonder that is cognate with one’s first sense of identity

That is my choice because I was privileged to live with him,

she told The Daily Telegraph in 2003.

She enjoyed a long and illustrious career across theatre, film and TV over seven decades until blindness made her retire,

the family said

Laurence Olivierlove letter

I sometimes feel such a peacefulness come over me when I think of you, or write to you — a gentle tenderness and serenity. A feeling devoid of all violence, passion or shattering longing... it makes me go out into the street with a smile on my face and in my heart for everybody."

One love letter Olivier sent summed up his love

I've been very privileged to have such a life,

Plowright said in a 2010 interview with The Actor's Work

When Larry married Joan he also married her interest in new theatre and her loyalties to the actors and directors with whom she had worked.”

As Gaskill himself wrote

Maggie Smithdame

Joan, darling, you’ll just have to wrestle with it.”

There’s a choice moment in the film Nothing Like a Dame when she says she has the burden of bearing two titles, dame and baroness, to which Maggie Smith sardonically replies

Franco Zeffirellidirector

I had to cook a ragout live on stage. The delicious smell sent people out at the interval looking happy but very hungry and the sale of sandwiches rocketed.”

In 1973, Franco Zeffirelli directed her in Eduardo de Filippo’s family drama Saturday, Sunday, Monday, where, she told the Observer

Acting legend Dame Joan Plowright dies at 95. She was a brilliant actress & she will be badly missed by friends & her family."

Someone else echoed

RIP Dame Joan Plowright. An absolute icon."

Devastated fans have also been paying tribute online, with one writing

Dame Joan Plowright was an iconic and deeply respected figure in the world of theatre, leaving an indelible mark on the industry she shaped with her talent and dedication.”

The organisation’s co-CEO, Hannah Essex, said