Joan Plowright, Acting Legend of Stage and Screen and Laurence Olivier’s Widow, Dies at 95

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By Carmel Dagan

Joan Plowright, perhaps the greatest Anglophone actor of the 20th century and the widow of Laurence Oliver, died on Thursday. She was 95.

Plowright was a prominent actress of stage and screen in her own right, especially in her native England, and was a Tony winner for “A Taste of Honey.” The actress had retired in 2014 after going blind due to macular degeneration.

Her family confirmed the news of her death to The Guardian on Friday, writing: “It is with great sadness that the family of Dame Joan Plowright, the Lady Olivier, inform you that she passed away peacefully on January 16 2025 surrounded by her family at Denville Hall aged 95. She enjoyed a long and illustrious career across theatre, film and TV over seven decades until blindness made her retire. She cherished her last 10 years in Sussex with constant visits from friends and family, filled with much laughter and fond memories. The family are deeply grateful to Jean Wilson and all those involved in her personal care over many years.”

Theaters across London’s West End will dim their lights for two minutes at 7 p.m. on Jan. 21 in remembrance of Plowright, the Society of London Theatre announced shortly after the news broke of her death.

She was nominated for an Oscar for 1991’s “Enchanted April,” winning a Golden Globe for her role in the Mike Newell-directed film about four mismatched Englishwomen sharing an Italian villa. The New York Times said she was “uproariously funny as Mrs. Fisher, a commanding older woman who becomes Rose and Lottie’s unlikely roommate” and “booms through the film dropping the names of literary eminences she once knew through the connections of her distinguished father.”

Plowright was no stranger to comedy: She was a standout in Lawrence Kasdan’s black comedy “I Love You to Death,” in which she played the mother of Tracy Ullman’s character, the wife of a pizzeria owner (Kevin Kline) who has cheated on her; Plowright’s mother urges her to have him killed, and hilarity ensues. Roger Ebert said, “Joan Plowright might seem like an unlikely choice as the mother, but gets the movie’s biggest laugh in a bedside scene.”

The actress also did television and was nominated for an Emmy in 1993 for her role in the HBO telepic “Stalin,” starring Robert Duvall.

Though she was first and foremost a creature of the theater, Plowright made a number of prominent appearances in feature films including not only “Enchanted April” and “I Love You to Death” but “Tea With Mussolini,” Barry Levinson’s “Avalon,” the Irish-set comedy “Widows’ Peak” and 2005’s “Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont.”

Plowright first came to prominence among those unfamiliar with the English stage thanks to her work in Tony Richardson’s brilliant 1960 film “The Entertainer,” based on the play by John Osborne and featuring a tour de force performance from Olivier as a dance hall performer facing existential defeat. She was nominated for the BAFTA Award for most promising newcomer for her role in the film in which she played his daughter, but the pair started an affair prior to the film, when they were in the stage production, that scandalously ended his two-decade marriage to actress Vivien Leigh. Plowright, who was also married when the affair started, became Olivier’s third wife — Lady Olivier — in March 1961.

Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright.

To escape the scandal of the divorce from Leigh, Olivier and Plowright headed for New York, where each appeared on the stage, he in “Becket,” she in Shelagh Delaney’s “A Taste of Honey,” for which she won a Tony as best actress in a play.

First published at Variety, January 17, 2025

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