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Jessica Tandy

Jessica Tandy

Birthday: 1909-06-07 | Place of Birth: London, England

Jessie Alice "Jessica" Tandy (June 7 1909 – September 11 1994) was an English - American stage and film actress. She first appeared on the London stage in 1926 at the age of 16, playing, among others, Katherine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V, and Cordelia opposite John Gielgud's King Lear. She also worked in British films. Following the end of her marriage to Jack Hawkins, she moved to New York, where she met Canadian actor Hume Cronyn. He became her second husband and frequent partner on stage and screen. She won the Tony Award for her performance as Blanche Dubois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948, sharing the prize with Katherine Cornell (who won for Antony and Cleopatra) and Judith Anderson (for the latter's portrayal of Medea). Over the following three decades, her career continued sporadically and included a substantial role in Alfred Hitchcock's film, The Birds (1963), and a Tony Award-winning performance in The Gin Game (playing in the two-character play opposite her husband, Cronyn) in 1977. She, along with Cronyn was a member of the original acting company of The Guthrie Theater. In the mid 1980s she enjoyed a career revival. She appeared opposite Hume Cronyn in the Broadway production of Foxfire in 1983 and its television adaptation four years later, winning both a Tony Award and an Emmy Award for her portrayal of Annie Nations. During these years, she appeared in films such as Cocoon (1985), also with Cronyn. She became the oldest actress to receive the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), for which she also won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Fried Green Tomatoes (1991). At the height of her success, she was named as one of People's "50 Most Beautiful People". She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1990, and continued working until shortly before her death. Description above from the Wikipedia article Jessica Tandy, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

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Known For

Acting

Year
Title

Role

1994
Nobody's Fool

as    Beryl Peoples

1994
Camilla

as    Camilla Cara

1993
To Dance with the White Dog

as    Cora Peek

1992
Used People

as    Freida

1991
Fried Green Tomatoes

as    Ninny Threadgoode

1989
Driving Miss Daisy

as    Daisy Werthan

1988
Cocoon: The Return

as    Alma Finley

1988
The House on Carroll Street

as    Miss Venable

1987
*batteries not included

as    Faye Riley

1985
Cocoon

as    Alma Finley

1984
The Bostonians

as    Miss Birdseye

1982
Still of the Night

as    Grace Rice

1982
The World According to Garp

as    Mrs. Fields

1971
O'Hara, U.S. Treasury

as    Genevieve

1963
The Birds

as    Lydia Brenner

1954
Producers' Showcase

as    Agnes

1951
The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel

as    Frau Lucie Marie Rommel

1950
September Affair

as    Catherine Lawrence

1948
A Woman's Vengeance

as    Janet Spence

1948
Actors Studio

as    Miss Lucretia Collins

1947
Forever Amber

as    Nan Britton

1946
Dragonwyck

as    Peggy O'Malley

1945
The Valley of Decision

as    Louise Kane

1944
The Seventh Cross

as    Liesel Roeder