Oscar Profile: Peggy Ashcroft

Born December 22, 1907 in Surrey, England, Edith Margaret Emily Ashcroft, known professionally as Peggy Ashcroft, was a titan of the British stage, who only occasionally appeared in films, but when she did, she was as amazing and unforgettable as she was in her lauded stage roles.

Ashcroft’s mother had been an actress. Her father, a land agent, was killed in action in World War I. Despite parental objections, she wanted to become an actress at an early age, and was even acting on stage at 16 while still in drama school. Laurence Olivier was a fellow pupil at the school. It was opposite Ralph Richardson that she made her professional stage debut.

Ashcroft made her West End debut in 1929 in Jew Suss. That same year she married Rupert Hart-Davis, then an aspiring actor her same age. He would later become a distinguished publisher of some of the great works of the twentieth century and although the marriage didn’t last, they remained friends for the rest of her life, he having survived her by eight years, dying at the age of 91 in 1999.

While playing Desdemona opposite African American actor Paul Robeson in Othello in 1930, she had a brief, albeit scandalous affair with Robeson that resulted in divorces for both in 1933. She then had an affair with author J.B. Priestley before marrying director Theodore Komisarjevsky, 25 years her senior, in 1934. They were divorced two years later. He would die in 1954 at 72.

Ashcroft had made her film debut in 1933’s The Wandering Jew, but it was her second film, Alfred Hitchcock;s The 39 Steps in 1935 that caused critics and audiences to take notice, but films weren’t for her, and she soon retreated to the stage. She married lawyer Jeremy Hutchinson, later Lord Hutchinson, with whom she had two children. They would divorce in 1965. He would live to be 102, dying in 2017.

Although most of Aschcroft’s early theatrical successes had been in Shakespearean plays opposite the likes of Olivier and John Gielgud, she also had a penchant for modern plays and had great success with Edward, My Son which she brought to Broadway, and The Heiress in the late 1940s, and The Deep Blue Sea and The Chalk Garden in the 1950s.

Made a Dame of the the British Empire in 1956, Ashcroft’s return to film in 1959’s The Nun’s Story earned her a BAFTA nomination. Subsequent films included Sunday Bloody Sunday and Three into Two Won’t Go in the 1970s, but it was 1984’s A Passage to India that brought the actress her greatest fame, earning her a BAFTA and an Oscar at 77. She won another BAFTA for the TV miniseries The Jewel in the Crown, also filmed on location in India, that same year.

Peggy Ashcroft died June 14, 1991 at the age of 83. Her ashes were scattered around a tree she planted in the Great Garden at New Place in 1959. A memorial service was held in Westminster Abbey where a plaque is commemorated in her honor in Poets Hall.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE 39 STEPS (1935), directed by Alfred Hitchcock

The crown jewel in Hitchcock’s British period, this is one of those mystery-suspense films in which you can’t remember who the murderer was, but you can’t forget the journey the protagonist took to get there. Played by Robert Donat at his best, the protagonist in this one is, as he or she was in most of Hitchcock’s films, he is a falsely accused innocent man who has to go to extreme limits to prove his innocence. One of the most unforgettable characters he meets along the way is Ashcroft as the abused crofter’s wife who gives him her husband’s coat even though she knows her husband will beat her when he finds it missing.

THE NUN’S STORY (1959), directed by Fred Zinnemann

Ashcroft and Edith Evans frequently worked together on the British stage. In the only film in which they both appear; they have no scenes together. Evans played the Mother Abbess, the Mother Superior of the order of nuns to which star Audrey Hepburn belongs. Ashcroft is the Mother Superior in the Belgian Congo where Hepburn is assigned in the central portion of the film. She brings a much need sunny disposition to the role for which she was nominated for a BAFTA. It was Evans, however, who received the bulk of supporting actress awards notice in the U.S. while Hepburn was the only performer nominated for an Oscar.

SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY (1971), directed by John Schlesinger

Ashcroft was fourth billed behind stars Peter Finch, Glenda Jackson, and Murray Head in Schlesinger’s groundbreaking film about the emotional intricacies of a polyamorous relationship between a young artist (Head) and his two lovers: a lonely male doctor (Finch) and a frustrated female office worker (Jackson). Ashcroft in a small but memorable performance plays Jackson’s mother who has been trying in vain to get Jackson to go back to her husband, telling her that she expects too much in a relationship, revealing that she (Ashcroft) had once left Jackson’s father but went back to him because she simply missed him.

A PASSAGE TO INDIA (1984), directed by David Lean

Ashcroft was cast in the pivotal role of Mrs. Moore after Katharine Hepburn turned it down. The role of an elderly British woman who is dismayed by the lack of intermingling between the British and the locals in her visit to India reflects Ashcroft’s long held world view allowing her to give the most poignant role of her career in Lean’s last film. The only question was would she be nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress. She was nominated in support and won handily after winning the New York film Critics award for Best Actress. She also won a BAFTA for both this and the similarly themed The Jewel in the Crown.

MADAME SOUSATZKA (1988), directed by John Schlesinger

Shirley MacLaine won a Golden Globe in the title role of an eccentric Russian emigree to London who teaches piano lessons for a living. The story revolves around her relationship with Navin Chowdhry as Indian emigree child prodigy which continues even after his mother can no longer afford to pay for his lessons. Twiggy plays a glamorous neighbor who has all the boys’ eyes. Ashcroft in her last theatrical film was their landlady, a role that earned her another BAFTA nomination. Neither MacLaine nor Ashcroft were nominated for Oscars, but the film is fondly remembered as one of the best of both actresses.