Heather Sears

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Heather Christine Sears (born September 28, 1935 in London , † January 3, 1994 in Hinchley Wood, Surrey ) was a British actress .

Life

Training and first film roles

Heather Sears was born in Whitechapel , London in 1935 . Her sister Ann Sears (1933-1992), who was two years older than her, was also an actress. Compared in type to Claire Bloom and the young Mary Ure , Sears attended the Central School of Speech and Drama in her hometown as a teenager . At the same time she found access to the Parisian intellectual circle around Pablo Picasso , Albert Camus and Arthur Koestler , where she counted the famous French actress Simone Signoret among her friends. Before the end of her training, she received a seven-year film contract through the agency of the film producer Jack Clayton , a friend and mentor who was to accompany her throughout her film career. This guaranteed her six months of freedom to work in the theater and watch television. After graduating from drama school, Sears worked at the repertoire theater in Windsor from 1955 . A year later she made her feature film debut with a small supporting role in Michael Truman's comedy My Better Half (1955), before the part as naive Susan in Maurice Elvey's comedy Dry Rot (1956) followed.

Not even 22 years old, Sears made her debut on the London stage in 1957 and took over from Mary Ure as Alison in John Osborne's Look Back in Anger alongside Alan Bates and Richard Pasco . In the same year, David Miller's Esther Costello paved her international breakthrough as a film actress . In the film adaptation of a novel by Nicholas Monsarrat , Sears plays the title role of a girl from Ireland who lost sight, hearing and speech in a traumatic childhood accident. Adopted and raised by a wealthy American society lady (played by Joan Crawford ), she is abused by shameless social charity managers and serves as a figurehead for her vile businesses. The melodrama was internationally successful with critics, who particularly singled out Sears performance. The New York Times celebrated the 1.60 m tall actress for her "inspiring, pleasing, lively face", while the industry journal Variety spoke of a "remarkable" film debut. A year later, Sears was nominated for the Golden Globe and was awarded the prize of the British Film Academy as Best British Actress Award.

Further work in theater and film

After this success, Sears took alternate engagements for the theater and film until the mid-1960s. In London she appeared again at the Royal Court Theater with Alan Bates and Richard Pasco in Jean Giraudoux 's L'Apollon de Bellac , appeared in Michael Hastings Yes, directed by John Dexter, and appeared on Lyric Hammersmith with Julien Green's homoerotic play The Stars of the South on. On the big screen she vied for the favor of Laurence Harvey together with Simone Signoret as the naive heiress in Jack Clayton's melodrama Der Weg nach oben (1959) . A year later, Clayton portrayed her in his award-winning D. H. Lawrence adaptation Sons and Lovers (1960) as the intellectual sweetheart of Dean Stockwell . After the female lead role of Christine in the hammer production The Riddle of the Eerie Mask (1962), a film adaptation of Gaston Leroux 's popular horror novel The Phantom of the Opera , Sears gradually withdrew from the film business.

In the next few years, Sears devoted himself mainly to family life, interrupted by a few works for television and two theater appearances: the acclaimed part as Grusche in Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the Chichester Theater Festival (1969) and an engagement for Alan Ayckbourn's comedy The Better Half in London's West End . It was not until the 1970s that she reappeared in the provincial repertoire theater. Sears new place of work was the Haymarket Theater in Leicester , where she played title roles in classical plays by Sophocles ( Antigone and Elektra ), Shakespeare , Goldsmith , Dostoevsky , Ibsen ( Hedda Gabler ) and Strindberg ( Miss Julie ), as well as more modern fabrics by Brecht ( The Caucasian Chalk Circle ), Ayckbourn ( The Better Half ), Rattigan and Pinter took over. She also toured English-speaking countries with the one-woman show Virginia Woolf .

From 1958 until his death in 1991, Heather Sears was married to writer Tony Masters (a production designer according to other sources). The marriage produced three sons together. Sears died in 1994 after a long illness at the age of 58.

Filmography (selection)

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Heather Sears. In: The Times , Jan. 27, 1994, Features.
  2. ↑ a b c d Robin Midgely: An early coming of age. In: Manchester Guardian Weekly, Jan 30, 1994, p. 10.
  3. ↑ a b c Adam Benedick: Obituary: Heather Sears. In: The Independent , January 19, 1994, p. 14.
  4. ↑ Lexicon of International Films 2000/2001 (CD-ROM)
  5. ^ A film review by Bosley Crowther in the New York Times, November 6, 1957.
  6. ↑ Critique excerpt from Variety, January 1, 1957  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.variety.com  
  7. ↑ Biography from the All Movie Guide at movies.nytimes.com
personal data
SURNAME Sears, Heather
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sears, Heather Christine (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British actress
DATE OF BIRTH September 28, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH London , England
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 1994
Place of death Hinchley Wood, Surrey, England