Jill Bennett

Jill Bennett was recorded as having studied at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and Prior's Field School. Recorded with the occupation actor. Recorded with the occupation stage actor. Recorded with the occupation film actor.

• Name — Jill Bennett • Birth Name — Nora Noel Jill Bennett • Born — 24 December 1926 • Birthplace — Penang, Straits Settlements (present-day Malaysia) • Died — 4 October 1990 • Place of death — London, England • Occupation — Actress • Years Active — 1947–1990 Nora Noel Jill Bennett (24 December 1926 – 4 October 1990) was a British actress.

Jill Bennett was born in Penang, the Straits Settlements, to "wealthy Scottish parents" who owned a rubber plantation. She was educated at Prior's Field School, an independent girls boarding school in Godalming, from which she was expelled when she was fourteen. She attended RADA from 1944 to 1946.

Bennett made her West End debut in Now Barabbas in March 1947, was a company member during the 1949 season at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford upon Avon, and made her first film, The Long Dark Hall with Rex Harrison, in 1950. She made many appearances in British films, including Lust for Life (1956), The Criminal (1960), The Nanny (1965), The Skull (1965), Inadmissible Evidence (1968), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), Julius Caesar (1970), I Want What I Want (1972), Mister Quilp (1975), Full Circle (1977) and Britannia Hospital (1982). She also appeared in the Bond film For Your Eyes Only (1981), Lady Jane (1986) and Hawks (1988). Her final film performance was in The Sheltering Sky (1990). She made forays into television, such as roles in Play for Today (Country, 1981), with Wendy Hiller, and as the colourful Lady Grace Fanner in John Mortimer's adaptation of his own novel, Paradise Postponed (1985). In 1984 she co-wrote and starred in the sitcom Poor Little Rich Girls alongside Maria Aitken. Among several roles, her husband John Osborne wrote the character of Annie in his play The Hotel in Amsterdam (1968) for her but Bennett's busy schedule prevented her from playing the role until it was screened on television in 1971. She co-starred with Rachel Roberts in the Alan Bennett television play The Old Crowd (1979), directed by Lindsay Anderson.

Bennett was the live-in companion of actor Godfrey Tearle in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She was married to screenwriter Willis Hall and later to John Osborne. Bennett and Osborne divorced, acrimoniously, in 1978. She had no children.

Bennett died by suicide on 4 October 1990, aged 63, having long suffered from depression and the brutalising effects of her marriage to Osborne (according to Osborne's biographer). She did this by taking an overdose of Quinalbarbitone. Her death took place at home, 23 Gloucester Walk, Kensington, London W8, and she left an estate valued at £596,978. Osborne, who was subject during her life to a restraining order regarding written comments about her, immediately wrote a vituperative chapter about her to be added to the second volume of his autobiography. The chapter, in which he rejoiced at her death, caused great controversy. In 1992, Bennett's ashes, along with those of her friend, the actress Rachel Roberts (who also died by suicide, in 1980), were scattered by their friend Lindsay Anderson on the waters of the River Thames in London. Anderson, with several of the two actresses' professional colleagues and friends, took a boat trip down the Thames, and the ashes were scattered while musician Alan Price sang the song "Is That All There Is?" The event was included in Anderson's autobiographical BBC documentary Is That All There Is? (1992).

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • 1954 — BBC Sunday-Night Theatre — Polly Eccles — Episode: "Caste" • Lady Ariadne Crofield — Episode: "Job for the Boy" • 1955 — Valerie Fergusson — Episode: "A Dream of Treason" • Sally Raynor — Episode: "Night Was Our Friend" • 1956 — ITV Play of the Week — Mary Belle — Episode: "The Anatomist" • Masha — Episode: "The Seagull" • Armchair Theatre — Isa — Episode: "Ring Out the Old" • 1957 — BBC Sunday-Night Theatre — Grette Brinson — Episode: "Do It Yourself" • Villette — Lucy Snowe — Mini-series • Do it Yourself — Assistant • 1958 — Armchair Theatre — Agnes Madinier — Episode: "The Web of Lace" • BBC Sunday-Night Theatre — Barbara Shearer — Episode: "Statue of David" • Catherine Sloper — Episode: "The Heiress" • 1959 — Anne-Marie — Episode: "Figure of Fun" • Saturday Playhouse — Trilby O'Ferral — Episode: "Trilby" • Armchair Theatre — Lily — Episode: "Hand in Glove" • 1960 — Stella — Episode: "Thunder on the Snowy" • ITV Playhouse — Rena — Episode: "Other People's House" • Emily Forsyth — Episode: "Independent Means" • Somerset Maugham Hour — Annette — Episode: "The Unconquered" • Millicent — Episode: "Before the Party" • 1961 — ITV Play of the Week — Emma Gore — Episode: "Ring of Truth" • Harriet — Episode: "Harriet" • 1962 — Somerset Maugham Hour — Olive Hardy — Episode: "The Book Bag" • The Cheaters — Ferba Martinez — Episode: "Time to Kill" • BBC Sunday-Night Play — Victoria Thomson — Episode: "Storm in Teacup" • 1963 — Hilary — Episode: "The Sponge Room" • Maupassant — Episode: "Foolish Wives" • ITV Play of the Week — Lizzie — Episode: "The Rainmaker" • Masha — Episode: "Three Sisters" • 1964 — Espionage — Mistress Patience Wright — Episode: "The Frantick Rebel" • First Night — Libby Beeston — Episode: "How Many Angels" • ITV Play of the Week — Helena — Episode: "A Midsummer's Night Dream" • Gilda — Episode: "A Choice of Coward #4: Design for Living" • 1965 — Marjorie Wilton — Episode: "We Thought You'd Like to Be Caesar" • 1966 — ABC Stage 67 — Frida Holmeier — Episode: "Dare I Weep, Dare I Mourn?" • Thirty-Minute Theatre — Mary Hass — Episode: "Brainscrew" • 1968 — BBC Play of the Month — Anna — Episode: "The Parachute" • Half Hour Story — Penelope — Episode: "Its Only Us" • 1971 — ITV Sunday Night Theatre — Episode: "The Hotel in Amsterdam" • 1974 — Late Night Drama — Jill — Episode: "Ms or Jill and Jack" • 1975 — Aquarius — Maria — Episode: "The Three Marias" • 1976 — Murder — Lola — Episode: "Hello Lola" • 1980 — Orient-Express — Jane — Episode: "Jane" • 1981 — Play for Today — Alice Carlion — Episode: "Country" • 1984 — Poor Little Rich Girls — Daisy Troop — Series regular • 1985 — Time for Murder — Sonia Barrington — Episode: "The Murders at Lynch Cross" • 1986 — Paradise Postponed — Lady Grace Fanner — Series regular • 1987 — Worlds Beyond — Elizabeth Berrington — Episode: "The Barrington Case"

• repertory season with Arthur Brough Players, Leas Pavilion Folkestone, starting in April 1946 • Kitty in Now Barabbas, New Boltons and Vaudeville Theatres, London, February 1947 • Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford upon Avon, 1949 season; including Fleance in Macbeth and Bianca in Othello • Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, St Martin's Theatre, December 1949 • Anni in Captain Carvallo, St James's Theatre, August 1950 • Iras in Caesar and Cleopatra and Antony and Cleopatra, St James's Theatre, May 1951 • Mary in The Trial of Mr. Pickwick, Westminster Theatre, May 1952 • Muslin in The Way to Keep Him, Arts Theatre, July 1952 • Helen Eliot in The Night of the Ball, New Theatre, January 1955 • Jane in Starlight, Theatre Royal Windsor and tour, March 1956 • Masha in The Seagull, Saville Theatre, August 1956 • Mrs Martin in The Bald Prima Donna, Arts Theatre, November 1956 • Sarah Stanham in The Touch of Fear, Aldwych Theatre, December 1956 • Isabelle in Dinner With the Family, New Theatre, December 1957 • Stella in Dispersal, Belgrade Theatre Coventry, June 1959 • Penelope in Last Day in Dreamland and A Glimpse of the Sea, Lyric Hammersmith, November 1959 • Anna in Anna Christie, Oxford Playhouse, March 1960 • Susan Roper in Breakfast for One, Arts Theatre, April 1961 • Feemy Evans in The Showing Up of Blanco Posnet and Lavinia in Androcles and the Lion, Mermaid Theatre, October 1961 • Estelle in In Camera (Huis Clos), Oxford Playhouse, February 1962 • Ophelia in Castle in Sweden, Piccadilly Theatre, May 1962 • Hilary in The Sponge Room and Elizabeth Mintey in Squat Betty, Royal Court, December 1962 • Isabelle in The Love Game, Arts Theatre, October 1964 • Countess Sophia Delyanoff in A Patriot for Me, Royal Court, June 1965 • Anna Bowers in A Lily in Little India, Hampstead Theatre Club, November 1965 • Imogen Parrott in Trelawny of the "Wells" (taking over from Pauline Taylor), National Theatre at the Old Vic, August 1966 • Katerina in The Storm, National Theatre at the Old Vic, October 1966 • Pamela in Time Present, Royal Court, May 1968; Duke of York's Theatre, July 1968 (for which she won the Variety Club and Evening Standard Awards for Best Actress) • Anna Bowers in Three Months Gone, Royal Court January 1970; Duchess Theatre March 1970 • Frederica in West of Suez, Royal Court, August 1971; Cambridge Theatre, October 1971 • Hedda in Hedda Gabler, Royal Court, June 1972 • Leslie Crosbie in The Letter, Palace Theatre Watford, June 1973 • Amanda in Private Lives (taking over from Maggie Smith), Queen's Theatre, July 1973 • Isobel Sands in The End of Me Old Cigar, Greenwich Theatre, January 1975 • Fay in Loot, Royal Court, June 1975 • Sally Prosser in Watch It Come Down, National Theatre at the Old Vic, February 1976; March 1976 Lyttelton Theatre • Mrs Shankland and Miss Railton-Bell in Separate Tables, Apollo Theatre, January 1977 • Miss Tina in The Aspern Papers, Chichester Festival Theatre, July 1978 • The Queen in The Eagle Has Two Heads (L'Aigle à deux têtes), Chichester Festival Theatre, May 1979 • Maggie Cutler in The Man Who Came to Dinner, Chichester Festival Theatre, July 1979 • Gertrude in Hamlet, Royal Court, April 1980 • Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes, Nottingham Playhouse and York Theatre Royal, March 1981 • Alice in The Dance of Death, Royal Exchange Manchester, October 1983 • Janine in Infidelities, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, August 1985; Donmar Warehouse, October 1985; Boulevard Theatre, June 1986 • Queen Elizabeth I in Mary Stuart, Edinburgh Festival, August 1987 • Miss Singer in Exceptions, New End Theatre Hampstead, July 1988 • Anne in Poor Nanny, King's Head Theatre Islington, March 1989

• Nora in A Doll's House, BBC Third Programme 1959. Directed by Frederick Bradnum. Cast included Jack May and John Gabriel. • Masha in Three Sisters, BBC Home Service Radio 1965. Directed by John Tydeman. Cast included Paul Scofield, Ian McKellen, Lynn Redgrave and Wilfrid Lawson.

• Who’s Who in the Theatre, 17th Edition, Vol. 1. (Gale Research, 1981.) • 25 Years of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court, Richard Findlater, ed. (Amber Lane Press, 1981.) • Theatre Record (periodical indexes)