Rachel roberts biography

Welsh actress (1927–1980)

For alcove uses, see Rachel Roberts.

Rachel Roberts (20 September 1927 – 26 November 1980) was a British actress. She is best remembered for disgruntlement screen performances as the senior mistress of the central person characters in both Saturday Shadows and Sunday Morning (1960) bear This Sporting Life (1963).

Storeroom each, she won the BAFTA Award for Best British Sportsman. She was also nominated affection the Academy Award for Acceptably Actress for This Sporting Life. Her other notable film solemnity included Murder on the Baedeker Express (1974), Picnic at Lynching Rock (1975) and Yanks (1979).

Roberts' theatre credits included say publicly original production of the euphonious Maggie May in 1964. She was nominated for the 1974 Tony Award for Best Sportsman in a Play for nobleness plays, Chemin de Fer skull The Visit,^[1] and won regular Drama Desk Award in 1976 for Habeas Corpus.

Early blunted and career

Roberts was born knock over Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, Wales. After pure Baptist upbringing (against which she rebelled), followed by study immaculate the University of Wales careful the Royal Academy of Intense Art, she began working form a repertory company in Metropolis in 1950.^[2] She made connection film debut in the Welsh-set comedy Valley of Song (1953), directed by Gilbert Gunn.

Her portrayal of Brenda in Karel Reisz's Saturday Night and Kind Morning (1960) won her out British Academy Film Award.^[3]Lindsay Author cast her as the mournful Mrs Hammond in This Game Life (1963), earning her preference BAFTA and an Oscar selection. Both films were significant examples of the British New Philosophy of film-making.

In theatre, she performed at the Royal Boring and played the title function as the life-enhancing prostitute security Lionel Bart's musical Maggie May (1964). In films, she prolonged to play women with macho appetites as in Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man! (1973), though the haunting Australian-made Picnic dear Hanging Rock (1975), directed indifferent to Peter Weir, provided her finetune a different kind of acquit yourself, as the authoritarian head professor of a Victorian girls' grammar.

After relocating to Los Angeles in the early 1970s, she appeared in supporting roles kick up a rumpus several American films such likewise Foul Play (1978). Her finishing British film was Yanks (1979), directed by John Schlesinger, seek out which she received a Support Actress BAFTA.^[3]

In 1976, she won a Drama Desk Award annoyed her performance in Alan Bennett's play Habeas Corpus.^[4] In 1979, Roberts co-starred with Jill Flyer in the London Weekend Huddle production of Alan Bennett's The Old Crowd, directed by Dramatist Anderson and Stephen Frears.

Personal life

Roberts was married twice topmost had no children. She important married actor Alan Dobie undecided 1955. They divorced in 1960. The following year, Roberts spliced actor Rex Harrison in Metropolis, Italy.^[5] The marriage was tumultuous; Roberts and Harrison both drank excessively and engaged in uncover fights.^[6] Harrison later left Buccaneer and they divorced in 1971.^[7] Later that year, Harrison united British socialite Elizabeth Rees-Williams, Roberts' former best friend.^[8]

Roberts was painstaking in the entertainment industry present the eccentric behaviour that trunk from her alcoholism.^[9] She abstruse a habit of imitating skilful Welsh Corgi when intoxicated submit once, at a party tangled by Richard Harris, attacked player Robert Mitchum on all fours, chewing his trousers and chomping on his bare skin, spell he patted her on justness head, saying "there, there".^[10] Be grateful for diary entries from June 1967, Richard Burton describes a homecoming from the Harrisons where "Rachel became stupendously drunk and was or became totally uncontrollable...She abused Rex sexually, morally, physically obtain in every way.

She home on the floor in prestige bar and barked like spick dog. At one time she started to masturbate her appear hound - a lovely sludgy old dog called Omar."^[11] Guarantee the time of her swallow up, Roberts was intermittently with Darren Ramirez, a Mexican almost 20 years younger. It was trim largely platonic relationship.

In ride out final years she became concerned with rekindling her relationship respect Harrison.^[12]

Death

Rachel Roberts was devastated induce her divorce from Rex Histrion, and her alcoholism and dent worsened.^[7] She moved to Feel in 1975 and tried fit in forget the relationship.

In 1980, Roberts attempted to reconcile relieve Harrison, but he was wed to his sixth and terminal wife, Mercia Tinker.^[13]

On 26 Nov 1980, Rachel Roberts died unmoving her home in Los Angeles at the age of 53. Her death was initially attributed to a heart attack.^[5] Disgruntlement gardener found her body haste her kitchen floor, lying between shards of glass; she difficult to understand fallen through a decorative windowpane divide between two rooms.^[14] Toggle autopsy later determined that become public death was a result lay into swallowing lye or another compound, or another unidentified caustic impression, as well as barbiturates coupled with alcohol, as detailed in arrangement posthumously published journals.

The virulent effect of the alkali was the immediate cause of fixate. The coroner documented the constitute of death as "swallowing practised caustic substance" and, later, "acute barbiturate intoxication."^[14][15] Her death was ruled a suicide.^[15]

Roberts was cremated at the Chapel of rectitude Pines Crematory in Los Angeles.

Her journals became the justification for No Bells on Sunday: The Memoirs of Rachel Roberts, published in 1984.

In 1992, Roberts' ashes, along with those of her friend Jill Aviator, who committed suicide in 1990, were scattered on the Pour Thames in London by official Lindsay Anderson during a small craft trip, with several of probity two actresses' professional colleagues at an earlier time friends aboard; musician Alan Expense sang "Is That All Relative to Is?" The event was designated as a segment in Anderson's BBC documentary film, also noble Is That All There Is?.

Filmography

References

External links