Susannah York, our English film, stage and television actress has died at the age of 72.
An obituary in 'The Telegraph' has characterised her as 'the blue-eyed English rose with the china-white skin and cupid lips who epitomised the sensuality of the swinging Sixties'. I think there was more to her than that.
Things you may or may not have known about Susannah, that she :
* had a mother who was a diplomat’s daughter and a father who was a merchant banker and businessman called Simon William Peel Vickers Fletcher.
* went to private schools, one of which she was effectively expelled at the age of 13 after owning up to a naked midnight swim in the school pool.
* after leaving school she auditioned for, and was accepted by, RADA where she won the 'Ronson Award' for 'most promising student' before graduating in 1958.
* in the 1960's her film career featured part in 'Tunes of Glory', 'The Greengage Summer', 'Tom Jones', 'A Man for All Seasons', 'The Killing of Sister George' and 'Battle of Britain'.
* in 1969 co-starred with George C. Scott, as Edward Rochester, playing the title role in an American television movie of Jane Eyre.
* played Superman's mother Lara on the doomed planet Krypton in 'Superman' in 1978.
* in 1984, starred as Mrs. Crachit in 'A Christmas Carol' (1984).
* had her last film role in 'The Calling' which was released in 2010 .
Here she is, forever young, when she was 24 and I was 16 in 'Tom Jones' in 1963 :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CELQ6qExkPI
* was described by the film critic Michael Billington as 'a bubbly, effervescent woman with a great gift for friendship whose greatest achievement was to escape the pigeonholing that is the curse of her profession and to overcome the perception of her as the flaxen-haired beauty of 1960s British movies. In her richly fulfilled later career, she proved that she was a real actor of extraordinary emotional range, not just a movie star.'
Michael's obituary in 'The Gaurdian' :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jan/16/susannah-york-obituary?INTCMP=SRCH
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