Celebrated Actress Joan Plowright, Beloved Widow of Olivier, Passes Away at 95

Joan Plowright, a British performer who infused her roles with a natural grace, whether portraying a sophisticated, name-dropping matron or a working-class youth, passed away on Thursday in Northwood, England. She was 95.

Her daughter, Julie-Kate Olivier, stated that she passed away at Denville Hall, a retirement residence for individuals in the performing arts.

Though she will forever be linked with her 28-year union to Laurence Olivier, one of Britain’s most esteemed actors, Ms. Plowright had numerous remarkable achievements.

She was awarded a Tony for “A Taste of Honey” (1960), in which she portrayed a young girl who becomes pregnant from a casual encounter with a sailor (portrayed by Billy Dee Williams). Thirty years later, she received an Oscar nomination for “Enchanted April” (1991), where she depicted a high-society Englishwoman from the 1920s who was familiar with all the finest Victorians. (As a child, her character recalls a poet who frequently visited and would tug on her pigtails; naturally, this was Alfred, Lord Tennyson.)

In 1993, Ms. Plowright enjoyed a remarkable night at the Golden Globes, taking home two awards for best supporting actress — for “Enchanted April” and for her role as Josef Stalin’s disapproving mother-in-law in the 1992 HBO film “Stalin.”

“Larry would have been so delighted by all the attention the Americans are giving me,” she remarked to The Daily Mail, referencing her spouse, who passed away in 1989.

Joan Ann Plowright was born on October 28, 1929, in Brigg, a market town in northeastern England, and was raised in the nearby Scunthorpe. Her father, William Ernest Plowright, served as a newspaper editor, while her mother, Daisy (Burton) Plowright, had aspired to a ballet career and was involved in amateur theater.

Joan, having participated in her mother’s drama group, secured a leading role in her school production. She portrayed Lady Teazle, the extravagant young wife, in “The School for Scandal.” One year later, in 1948, she made her professional stage debut in Croydon, a town in South London.

The subsequent year, she was awarded a scholarship to the Old Vic Theater School in London. She auditioned, but was not selected, for Orson Welles’s cinematic version of “Othello” (1951), although Welles was impressed and later invited her to be the sole female member of the cast in “Moby Dick — Rehearsed,” which was performed in London for three weeks in 1955. Portions of this play were captured on film, but that footage has since been lost.

Her first significant triumph on the London stage was as the title character in “The Country Wife” (1956), a story about a passionate newlywed who discovers her affection for city living for various delightful reasons.

When Olivier observed the play, he came backstage to introduce himself and commend her performance. Two years later, they acted together in John Osborne’s comic drama “The Entertainer,” where she played the sympathetic daughter of a rather disreputable song-and-dance man. (Olivier was 22 years older than her.) Osborne, a prominent new playwright from London’s angry-young-man movement, had been a former neighbor of Ms. Plowright’s in Scunthorpe. (Olivier and Ms. Plowright subsequently starred together in a 1960 film version of “The Entertainer,” directed by Tony Richardson.)

Beginning in 1956, Ms. Plowright collaborated with the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theater in London. Following “The Country Wife,” she enjoyed leading roles in plays such as Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” George Bernard Shaw’s “Major Barbara,” and Eugene Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros.” Olivier directed her in Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” and Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost” there.

Ms. Plowright’s career in American theater was somewhat constrained. Her Broadway debut consisted of a dual role in Ionesco’s “The Chairs” and “The Lesson” (1958). After her achievements with Olivier (in transfers from London) and in “A Taste of Honey,” she returned to Broadway just once more — as the central character, a retired escort with a scheme, in “Filumena” (1980).

Eventually, film emerged as a significant component of her career. Her inaugural appearance was in “Time Without Pity,” a drama from 1957. In “Equus” (1977), Peter Shaffer’s play concerning an emotionally troubled adolescent who blinds a barn full of horses, she portrayed the bereaved religious mother. In “The Dressmaker” (1988), she played a dignified and proper seamstress amid wartime Liverpool.

After Olivier’s passing, Ms. Plowright escalated her work pace, featuring in 30 films during the 1990s and 2000s, excluding television films, many of which were adaptations of Shakespeare and Chekhov.

Alongside Tracey Ullman, she humorously attempted to eliminate Kevin Kline, who portrayed an adulterous pizzeria operator, in “I Love You to Death” (1990). “Tea With Mussolini” (1999) featured Ms. Plowright as an expatriate in 1930s Florence whose pleasant life of social luncheons is disturbed by the rise of the Fascists. In “Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont” (2005), she portrayed a widow striving to forge a new, independent existence as a young writer (Rupert Friend) brings her happiness by pretending to be her grandson.

At times, Ms. Plowright embodied the spirit of maternal nurturing and affection — for instance, as Mrs. Wilson, the much kinder wife of the neighborhood curmudgeon in “Dennis the Menace” (1993), and as the dog caretaker in “101 Dalmatians” (1996). “Thosepuppies are incredibly trusting,” she shared with a journalist from The Times of London that year. “They can be anyone’s for an orange.”

Her ultimate film performances placed her on expansive, enigmatic country estates. In “Knife Edge” (2009), she portrayed a caretaker who suspects the gruesome reality of the opulent residence where she is now employed. In “The Spiderwick Chronicles” (2008), she found herself cohabitating with enchanting creatures and spirits.

She released a memoir titled “And That’s Not All” in 2001, and received the title of Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2004.

Ms. Plowright formally stepped away from acting in 2014, having lost her sight due to macular degeneration. However, she featured in the 2018 documentary “Tea With the Dames,” alongside fellow dames and actresses Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench, and Maggie Smith.

In 1953, Ms. Plowright wed Roger Gage, an actor whom she encountered while both were touring in South Africa. A year following her 1960 divorce, she married Olivier, who had recently split from Vivien Leigh, in a ceremony officiated by a justice of the peace in Connecticut.

Aside from her daughter Julie-Kate, Ms. Plowright is survived by a son, Richard Olivier; another daughter, Tamsin Olivier; and four grandchildren. Her younger sibling, David, a television producer, passed away in 2006.

During a 2018 BBC Radio interview, Ms. Plowright discussed the resilience required when life becomes filled with loss and sets boundaries. “It’s my moment now, and I will cultivate the strength to manage it,” she expressed.

She referenced Max Ehrmann’s poem “Desiderata” (“Be careful and strive to be happy”), asserting that happiness is something “you need to strive for,” and cited William Butler Yeats on “the allure of challenges.”

“It is captivating,” she remarked, “to explore how you can manage.”

Robert Berkvist, a former New York Times arts editor who passed away in 2023, and Isabella Kwai contributed to the reporting.