Wendy Hiller

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Dame Wendy Margaret Hiller DBE (born August 15, 1912 in Bramhall , Cheshire , England, † May 14, 2003 in Beaconsfield ) was a British actress whose career spanned almost 60 years. She was considered the grande dame of British theater , but also took on major film roles.

life and career

Wendy Hiller began her acting career in Manchester in the early 1930s . She became known from 1934 for her role as a poor woman in the play Love on the Dole, which was also performed at the West End in London and on Broadway in New York. Nobel laureate in literature George Bernard Shaw saw the young Hiller in a performance and became her sponsor. She took on numerous roles in pieces by Shaw, but also in works by Henrik Ibsen and Thomas Hardy . On the big screen, however, Hiller made another role in the successful Shaw film The novel of a flower girl in 1938 . Here she played the role of the poor flower girl Eliza Doolittle at the side of Leslie Howard , which earned her excellent reviews and a first Oscar nomination. This was followed in 1940 by the title role in the Shaw film adaptation of Major Barbara (1941). Hiller shot the romance film I know where I'm going (1945) with the British director duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger . Wendy Hiller was best known for her sad, moody characters.

Hiller then increasingly turned back to the theater work and played the role of Catharine Sloper in the world premiere of The Heiress on Broadway . In the 1950s she played mainly in the West End of London, while as she got older she turned more to character roles in the cinema. For her appearance as a lonely hotel manager in Separate from Table and Bed , Hiller won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1959 . Hiller received another Oscar nomination for the role of Lady Alice More in the period film A Man in Every Season about the life of Thomas More . In 1974 she took on the role of the Russian princess in Sidney Lumet's star-studded crime film Murder on the Orient Express to Agatha Christie . She had one of her last major film roles in 1980 as a nurse in The Elephant Man . In total, she took part in over 40 films, plus numerous television roles. She had one of her last roles in the West End in the late 1980s in a theater production of Miss Daisy and Her Chauffeur .

In 1975 Hiller was accepted into the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II as Dame Commander . Her marriage to the playwright Ronald Gow in 1937 resulted in a son and daughter. The marriage lasted until Gow's death in 1993. In 1996 Hiller received the Dilys Powell Award (1995) for Lifetime Achievement from the London Critics' Circle . Wendy Hiller died in 2003 at the age of 90.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hiller, Wendy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hiller, Wendy Margaret
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British actress
DATE OF BIRTH August 15, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Bramhall
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 2003
Place of death Beaconsfield