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| death_date = {{death date and age|2015|1|30|1932|5|9|df=yes}}
| death_date = {{death date and age|2015|1|30|1932|5|9|df=yes}}
| death_place = [[Hammersmith]], London, England
| death_place = [[Hammersmith]], London, England
| death_cause = Stroke
| death_cause = [[Stroke]]
| occupation = Actor
| occupation = Actor
| years_active = 1946–2011
| years_active = 1946–2011

Revision as of 18:16, 2 February 2015

Geraldine McEwan
Born
Geraldine McKeown

(1932-05-09)9 May 1932
Old Windsor, Berkshire, England
Died30 January 2015(2015-01-30) (aged 82)
Hammersmith, London, England
Cause of deathStroke
OccupationActor
Years active1946–2011
SpouseHugh Cruttwell (1953–2002, his death)
Children1 son, 1 daughter
Websitegeraldinemcewan.com

Geraldine McEwan (9 May 1932 – 30 January 2015) was an English actress with a diverse career in theatre, film and television.

McEwan was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play in 1998 for her performance in The Chairs. She won a BAFTA Award for her performance in the television serial Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1990). From 2004 to 2009 she appeared as Miss Marple, the Agatha Christie sleuth, for the series Marple.

Early life and career

She was born Geraldine McKeown on 9 May 1932 in Old Windsor, Berkshire, England, to Donald and Norah (née Burns) McKeown. She had Irish antecedents; her maternal grandfather came from Kilkenny while her paternal grandfather came from Belfast.[1]McEwan attended Windsor County Girls' School, then a private school, on a scholarship and took elocution lessons.[2]

As a teenager, McEwan became interested in theatre and her extensive theatrical career began at 14 as assistant stage manager at the Theatre Royal, Windsor. She made her first appearance on the Windsor stage in October 1946 as an attendant of Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream and played many parts with the Windsor Repertory Company from March 1949 to March 1951, including a role in the Ruth Gordon bio play Years Ago opposite guest player John Clark. She made her first West End appearance at the Vaudeville Theatre on 4 April 1951 as Christina Deed in Who Goes There!, which was markedly successful.[3] McEwan first appeared on television in a BBC series, Crime on Our Hands (1954). with Jack Watling, Dennis Price and Sonia Dresdel.[4]

McEwan appeared at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon during the late 1950s and early 1960s, during the period when it was evolving into the Stratford venue for the new Royal Shakespeare Company formed in 1960, and at The Aldwych, the RSC's original London home. During the 1958 season in Stratford, she played Olivia in Twelfth Night, Marina in Pericles and Hero in Much Ado About Nothing.[5][6] She returned to Stratford in 1961 to portray Ophelia in Hamlet and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing.[5]

She appeared with Kenneth Williams in the original 1965 production of Loot by Joe Orton, which closed at the Wimbledon Theatre before reaching London.[7][8] After this she joined the National Theatre Compamy, then based at the Old Vic and headed by Sir Laurence Olivier. She appeared with Olivier in August Strindberg's Dance of Death, staged by Glen Byam Shaw and first performed in February 1967, and the film version released in 1969.[9]

She took the lead role in a television adaptation of Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1978). McEwan was Spark's favourite in the role and came the closest to the character as she imagined it; Brodie has also been portrayed on stage and screen by Vanessa Redgrave and Maggie Smith.[5][4] Her other work for television in this period included roles in The Barchester Chronicles (1982) and Mapp and Lucia (1985-86) with Prunella Scales as Mapp and McEwan as Lucia. She won the Evening Standard Award for Best Actress in 1983 for her performance as Mrs Malaprop in a production of The Rivals at the National Theatre.[1]

Later career

She made her directing debut, in 1988, with the Renaissance Theatre Company's touring season, Renaissance Shakespeare on the Road, co-produced with the Birmingham Rep, and ending with a three-month repertory programme at the Phoenix Theatre in London. McEwan's contribution was a light romantic staging of As You Like It, with Kenneth Branagh playing Touchstone as an Edwardian music hall comedian. She won another Evening Standard Best Actress Award in 1995 for her role in a revival of William Congreve's The Way of the World, again at the National Theatre.[1] Sheridan Morley, then theatre critic of The Spectator, wrote: "Geraldine McEwan (in the performance of the night and her career) comes on looking like an ostrich which has mysteriously been crammed into a tambourine lined with fresh flowers."[10]

With Richard Briers, she starred from November 1997 in a revival of Eugène Ionesco's absurdist play The Chairs in a co-production between Simon McBurney's Theatre de Complicite and London's Royal Court Theatre, who had also staged the British premiere 40 years earlier.[11][12] This production had a brief run on Broadway between April and June 1998; McEwan was nominated for a Tony Award.[12][13]

Her later television credits include Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1990) and Mulberry (1992-93).[8] She was also in the Cassandra episode of Red Dwarf (1999), playing a prescient computer. In Peter Mullan's The Magdalene Sisters, (2002), she played the role of Sister Bridget. McEwan played the evil Mortianna in the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991).

McEwan was selected by Granada Television for Marple (2004-7), a new series featuring the Agatha Christie sleuth Miss Marple. McEwan announced her retirement from the role in 2008 after appearing in 12 films.[14][15] In 2005, she provided the voice of Miss Thripp in the film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and A Matter of Loaf and Death.

Private life

In 1953 McEwan married Hugh Cruttwell, whom she had first met while working at the Theatre Royal, Windsor aged 14. Cruttwell was the Principal of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1965 to 1984.[16] They had a son Greg, who is an actor and screenwriter, and a daughter, Claudia. Cruttwell died in 2002.[16]

McEwan was reported to have declined an OBE, and later, a DBE (in 2002), but she did not respond to these claims.[5][17] McEwan died on 30 January 2015 at the Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith after suffering a stroke three months earlier.[18][19]

Awards

Selected filmography

Name Year Roles Other titles
There Was a Young Lady 1953 Irene
No Kidding 1960 Catherine Robinson Beware of Children (U.S.)
Dance of Death 1969 Alice
The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones 1976 Lady Bellaston
Escape from the Dark 1976 Miss Coutt The Littlest Horse Thieves (U.S.)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (TV series) 1978 Jean Brodie
Foreign Body 1986 Lady Ammanford
Mapp and Lucia 1985–1986 Emmeline Lucas (Lucia)
Henry V 1989 Alice
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves 1991 Mortianna
Mulberry 1992–1993 Miss Farnaby
Moses 1995 Miriam
The Love Letter 1999 Constance Scattergoods
Food of Love 2002 Novotna
The Magdalene Sisters 2002 Sister Bridget
Pure 2002 Nanna
Vanity Fair 2004 Lady Southdown
The Lazarus Child 2004 Janet
Carrie's War 2004 Mrs. Gotobed
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit 2005 Miss Thripp {voice}
Arrietty 2011 Haru {voice}

Playing Miss Marple in Marple, ITV, 2004–2008

Name Year
Marple: The Body in the Library 2004
Marple: The Murder at the Vicarage 2004
Marple: 4.50 from Paddington 2004
Marple: A Murder Is Announced 2005
Marple: Sleeping Murder 2005
Marple: The Moving Finger 2006
Marple: By the Pricking of My Thumbs 2006
Marple: The Sittaford Mystery 2006
Marple: At Bertram's Hotel 2007
Marple: Ordeal by Innocence 2007
Marple: Towards Zero 2008
Marple: Nemesis 2008

References

  1. ^ a b c Obituary:Geraldine McEwan, The Telegraph, 1 February 2015
  2. ^ "'Fishnets, tarty wigs – I love all that'". Daily Telegraph. 8 December 2004.
  3. ^ Who's Who in the Theatre, 17th edition, Gale (1982)
  4. ^ a b Janet Moat "McEwan, Geraldine (1932-2015)", BFI screenonline
  5. ^ a b c d Michael Coveney "Geraldine McEwan obituary, The Guardian, 31 January 2015
  6. ^ "Geraldine McEwan ~ The Shakespeare Connection", geraldinemcewan.com
  7. ^ John Lahr Prick Up Your Ears, Knopf, 1978
  8. ^ a b Stevens, Christopher (2010). Born Brilliant: The Life Of Kenneth Williams. John Murray. p. 386. ISBN 1-84854-195-3. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  9. ^ Simon Callow The National: The Theatre and Its Work 1963–1997, Nick Hern Books, 1997
  10. ^ Sheridan Morley "Theatre: Love Has No Laws", The Spectator, 28 October 1995, p.51
  11. ^ Matt Wolf "Review: The Chairs", Variety, 13 December 1997
  12. ^ a b Harry Haun "Briers and McEwan Dust Off The Chairs for Broadway", Playbill, 17 April 1998
  13. ^ "Geraldine McEwan", Playbill Vault
  14. ^ Conlan, Tara (2008-01-23). "McEwan retires from Marple role". Media Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved 2008-01-23.
  15. ^ Nicola Harley "Miss Marple actress Geraldine McEwan dies aged 82", The Telegraph, 31 January 2015
  16. ^ a b Claire Armitstead Obituary: Hugh Cruttwell, The Guardian, 29 August 2002
  17. ^ "The prime of Miss Jane Marple". Mail Online.
  18. ^ "Actress Geraldine McEwan dies aged 82". BBC News Entertainment & Arts. 31 January 2015. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
  19. ^ "'Miss Marple actor Geraldine McEwan dies aged 82'". The Guardian. 31 January 2015.

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