Shirley Anne Field, the British leading lady who starred alongside Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer, Albert Finney in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and Kenneth More in Man in the Moon — all in 1960 — has died. She was 87.
“It is with great sadness that we are sharing the news that Shirley Anne Field passed away peacefully on Sunday, Dec. 10, surrounded by her family and friends,” a spokesperson announced.
“Shirley Anne will be greatly missed and remembered for her unbreakable spirit and her amazing legacy spanning more than five decades on stage and screen.”
For her first Hollywood film, Field passed up John Schlesinger’s A Kind of Loving to star opposite Steve McQueen and Robert Wagner in the World War II drama The War Lover (1962). It was a decision she would regret, she explained in a 2009 interview.
“I finally had a chance to go to Hollywood and become a worldwide name.
“It is with great sadness that we are sharing the news that Shirley Anne Field passed away peacefully on Sunday, Dec. 10, surrounded by her family and friends,” a spokesperson announced.
“Shirley Anne will be greatly missed and remembered for her unbreakable spirit and her amazing legacy spanning more than five decades on stage and screen.”
For her first Hollywood film, Field passed up John Schlesinger’s A Kind of Loving to star opposite Steve McQueen and Robert Wagner in the World War II drama The War Lover (1962). It was a decision she would regret, she explained in a 2009 interview.
“I finally had a chance to go to Hollywood and become a worldwide name.
- 12/12/2023
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Appearing in many of the landmark gritty dramas of the era, the actor, who has died aged 87, stood out for portraying vulnerability combined with a canny intelligence
Shirley Anne Field had the kind of ingenue English-rose freshness and beauty that the British cinema loved in the 50s and 60s – it had something feline about it, a kind of innocent-fatale. Hers were the kind of looks that always introduced an almost unintentional note of innocence and poignancy into the tough dramas and kitchen-sink pictures in which she was cast; she had something of the model agency and deportment school and yet also the pinup mag.
Field was of the same generation as heartstoppingly beautiful performers such as Janette Scott, Shirley Eaton, Sylvia Sims and Julie Christie. She appeared briefly in Michael Powell’s 1960 chiller Peeping Tom as a temperamental film diva (quite unlike her real self) but had her breakthrough in...
Shirley Anne Field had the kind of ingenue English-rose freshness and beauty that the British cinema loved in the 50s and 60s – it had something feline about it, a kind of innocent-fatale. Hers were the kind of looks that always introduced an almost unintentional note of innocence and poignancy into the tough dramas and kitchen-sink pictures in which she was cast; she had something of the model agency and deportment school and yet also the pinup mag.
Field was of the same generation as heartstoppingly beautiful performers such as Janette Scott, Shirley Eaton, Sylvia Sims and Julie Christie. She appeared briefly in Michael Powell’s 1960 chiller Peeping Tom as a temperamental film diva (quite unlike her real self) but had her breakthrough in...
- 12/12/2023
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...
- 5/22/2016
- by Stage Tube
- BroadwayWorld.com
Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...
- 5/22/2015
- by Stage Tube
- BroadwayWorld.com
Part I. Anger, Suez and Archie Rice
“There they are,” George Devine told John Osborne, surveying The Entertainer‘s opening night audience. “All waiting for you…Same old pack of c***s, fashionable assholes. Just more of them than usual.” The Royal Court had arrived: no longer outcasts, they were London’s main attraction.
Look Back in Anger vindicated Devine’s model of a writer’s-based theater. Osborne’s success attracted a host of dramatists to Sloane Square. There’s Shelagh Delaney, whose A Taste of Honey featured a working-class girl pregnant from an interracial dalliance; Harold Pinter’s The Room, a bizarre “comedy of menace”; and John Arden’s Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance, which aimed a Gatling gun at its audience. Devine encouraged them, however bold or experimental. “You always knew he was on the writer’s side,” Osborne said.
Peter O’Toole called the Royal Court actors “an...
“There they are,” George Devine told John Osborne, surveying The Entertainer‘s opening night audience. “All waiting for you…Same old pack of c***s, fashionable assholes. Just more of them than usual.” The Royal Court had arrived: no longer outcasts, they were London’s main attraction.
Look Back in Anger vindicated Devine’s model of a writer’s-based theater. Osborne’s success attracted a host of dramatists to Sloane Square. There’s Shelagh Delaney, whose A Taste of Honey featured a working-class girl pregnant from an interracial dalliance; Harold Pinter’s The Room, a bizarre “comedy of menace”; and John Arden’s Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance, which aimed a Gatling gun at its audience. Devine encouraged them, however bold or experimental. “You always knew he was on the writer’s side,” Osborne said.
Peter O’Toole called the Royal Court actors “an...
- 3/13/2015
- by Christopher Saunders
- SoundOnSight
Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...
- 5/22/2014
- by Stage Tube
- BroadwayWorld.com
Philip Ziegler's biography of Laurence Olivier captures the man in his contradictory essence
Laurence Olivier was the greatest British actor of his time, primus inter pares of the trio who dominated our theatre from the early 1930s to the 1980s. His superiority to his chief rivals, Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, resides in the role he played in the creation of the National Theatre and in the way he came to embody for the public at large a sense of national greatness. His most magnificent and emblematic performances were as Henry V and as Archie Rice in John Osborne's The Entertainer. The former was the warrior king in the patriotic second world war movie that captured the Churchillian spirit of Britain at her finest hour. The latter was the second-rate music hall comedian, full of imperial bluster and bad faith, who symbolised in the aftermath of the Suez debacle a nation that had,...
Laurence Olivier was the greatest British actor of his time, primus inter pares of the trio who dominated our theatre from the early 1930s to the 1980s. His superiority to his chief rivals, Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, resides in the role he played in the creation of the National Theatre and in the way he came to embody for the public at large a sense of national greatness. His most magnificent and emblematic performances were as Henry V and as Archie Rice in John Osborne's The Entertainer. The former was the warrior king in the patriotic second world war movie that captured the Churchillian spirit of Britain at her finest hour. The latter was the second-rate music hall comedian, full of imperial bluster and bad faith, who symbolised in the aftermath of the Suez debacle a nation that had,...
- 9/22/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...
- 5/22/2013
- by Stage Tube
- BroadwayWorld.com
Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...
- 5/22/2012
- by Stage Tube
- BroadwayWorld.com
Olivier wasn't just a great actor – he was a quintessentially modern performer, who cast a powerful spell over audiences
It's a shock to realise that few people under the age of 60 will ever have seen Laurence Olivier on stage. It came as an even greater shock to be told recently that many young actors have either scarcely heard of him, or routinely dismiss him as an "old ham". Nothing could be further from the truth. I first came under Olivier's spell when, as a 15-year-old schoolboy, I saw him play Malvolio, Macbeth and Titus Andronicus in a single Stratford season. He was not only a great actor. He was also, allowing for changes of style and taste, a quintessentially modern actor.
How to explain his power? I would seize first of all on the voice. What was initially a light tenor became, through training and application, a uniquely flexible instrument...
It's a shock to realise that few people under the age of 60 will ever have seen Laurence Olivier on stage. It came as an even greater shock to be told recently that many young actors have either scarcely heard of him, or routinely dismiss him as an "old ham". Nothing could be further from the truth. I first came under Olivier's spell when, as a 15-year-old schoolboy, I saw him play Malvolio, Macbeth and Titus Andronicus in a single Stratford season. He was not only a great actor. He was also, allowing for changes of style and taste, a quintessentially modern actor.
How to explain his power? I would seize first of all on the voice. What was initially a light tenor became, through training and application, a uniquely flexible instrument...
- 3/20/2012
- by Michael Billington
- The Guardian - Film News
In his directorial debut Ralph Fiennes has created a vivid, intelligent Coriolanus with powerful political relevance
Modern-dress Shakespeare has been with us for nearly a century, long enough to cease being a novelty or in need of justification. Barry Jackson's 1920s Cymbeline at Birmingham Rep with the cast in first world war uniform is the key example we were shown pictures of as sixth-formers in the late 40s. Traditional dress, however we define it, is currently pretty rare, though film-makers, no doubt because of the continuing popularity of Roman epics, reached for their togas when Charlton Heston appeared in fustian versions of Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra. The only recent movie to deal with one of the Roman plays was Richard Linklater's 2008 Me and Orson Welles, about the controversy surrounding Welles's 1937 anti-fascist modern-dress production of Julius Caesar in New York.
But now we have Ralph Fiennes's bloody and bold directorial debut,...
Modern-dress Shakespeare has been with us for nearly a century, long enough to cease being a novelty or in need of justification. Barry Jackson's 1920s Cymbeline at Birmingham Rep with the cast in first world war uniform is the key example we were shown pictures of as sixth-formers in the late 40s. Traditional dress, however we define it, is currently pretty rare, though film-makers, no doubt because of the continuing popularity of Roman epics, reached for their togas when Charlton Heston appeared in fustian versions of Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra. The only recent movie to deal with one of the Roman plays was Richard Linklater's 2008 Me and Orson Welles, about the controversy surrounding Welles's 1937 anti-fascist modern-dress production of Julius Caesar in New York.
But now we have Ralph Fiennes's bloody and bold directorial debut,...
- 1/22/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
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