Anna Massey

Anna Massey, CBE, was an English actress.[3] She won a BAFTA Award for the role of Edith Hope in the 1986 TV adaptation of Anita Brookner’s novel Hotel du Lac in a role which one of her co-stars, Julia McKenzie, has said 'could have been written for her.

Spouse

Uri Andres (1990 - present) https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/how-we-met-uri-and...

Jeremy Brett (24 May 1958 - 1962) (divorced) 1 child

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Quotes:

I think however old and blind and prune-like one may look, the spirit that goes on inside you stays young and flirtacious.

"My education finished at fifteen; if I'd stayed at school I'm not sure I'd have become an actor."

"Theatre eats up too much of your family life. I have a grandson and a husband and I'd rather I was able to be a granny and a wife."

"Actors marrying each other is not a good idea."

Trivia

Daughter of the actors Raymond Massey and Adrianne Allen and the niece of the Canadian politician Vincent Massey.

Sister of Daniel Massey

Won a Tony-nomination for "The Reluctant Debutante" in 1955 at the age of 18.

Mother of the writer David Huggins ('The Kiss' and 'Lucky Amnesia').

Veteran director John Ford was her godfather.

She was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 1983 (1982 season) for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for "The Importance of Being Earnest".

She was awarded the 1982 London Critics' Circle Theatre Award (Drama Theatre Award) for Best Supporting Actress of 1981 for her performance in a Kind of Alaska.

Given the title of Commander of the order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in the New Year's Honours, 2005.

Won a Tony Award nomination as Best Supporting or Featured Actress (Dramatic) for "The Reluctant Debutante" in 1957 at the age of 19.

Personal Quotes

I think however old and blind and prune-like one may look, the spirit that goes on inside you stays young and flirtacious.

"My education finished at fifteen; if I'd stayed at school I'm not sure I'd have become an actor."

"Theatre eats up too much of your family life. I have a grandson and a husband and I'd rather I was able to be a granny and a wife."

"Actors marrying each other is not a good idea."

Where Are They Now

(January 2007) She lives in London, England.

Anna Raymond Massey, CBE (11 August 1937 – 3 July 2011) was an English actress. She won a BAFTA Award for the role of Edith Hope in the 1986 TV adaptation of Anita Brookner’s novel Hotel du Lac in a role which one of her co-stars, Julia McKenzie, has said 'could have been written for her.'

Early life

Massey was born in Thakeham, Sussex, England, the daughter of British actress Adrianne Allen and Canadian-born Hollywood actor Raymond Massey. Her brother, Daniel Massey, was also an actor. She was the niece of Vincent Massey, a Governor General of Canada, and her godfather was film director John Ford.

Career

Although she had no formal training at either drama school or in repertory, in May 1955 at the age of 17 Anna Massey made her first appearance on stage at the Theatre Royal, Brighton, as Jane in The Reluctant Debutante, subsequently making her first London appearance in the same play at the Cambridge Theatre in May 1955 "and was suddenly famous". She then left the cast in London to repeat her performance in New York in October 1956.

Several of her early film roles were in mystery thrillers. She made her cinema debut in the Scotland Yard film Gideon's Day (1958), as Sally, daughter of Jack Hawkins's Detective Inspector. The director was her godfather John Ford. She played a potential murder victim in Michael Powell's cult thriller Peeping Tom (1960) and appeared in Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965). In 1972, she played the role of the cockney barmaid Babs in Alfred Hitchcock's penultimate film Frenzy. In the documentary on the film's DVD release, Massey mentioned that she originally auditioned for the much smaller role of the secretary Monica, a part for which Jean Marsh was cast. She also noted that her character's nude scenes in Frenzy were performed by body doubles. Massey appeared with her brother Daniel playing deadly siblings in the horror film The Vault of Horror (1973).

Massey continued to make occasional film and stage appearances, but worked more frequently in television, making her first small screen appearance as Jacqueline in Green of the Year in October 1955 and in dramas such as The Pallisers (1974), the 1978 adaptation of Rebecca (in which she starred with her ex-husband, Jeremy Brett), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1978), The Cherry Orchard (1980), and Anna Karenina (1985). She had roles in the British comedy series The Darling Buds of May (1991) and The Robinsons (2005). She also appeared in a number of mysteries and thrillers on television, including episodes of Inspector Morse, The Inspector Alleyn Mysteries, Midsomer Murders, Strange, Lewis, and Agatha Christie's Poirot.

With Imelda Staunton, she co-devised and starred as Josephine Daunt in Daunt and Dervish on BBC radio. She was the narrator of This Sceptred Isle on BBC Radio 4, a history of Britain from Roman times which ran for more than 300 fifteen-minute episodes. In 2009 she also appeared in a new radio version of The Killing of Sister George.

In 1986, Massey was awarded the British Academy TV Award for Best Actress for her role in Hotel du Lac after acquiring the TV rights two years earlier, only a few weeks before the novel won the Booker Prize. She also appeared as Mrs. D'Urberville in the 2008 BBC adaptation of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, an older version of May and as Rosie in An Angel For May, and in the 2004 BBC version of Our Mutual Friend.

Acting style

One of Massey's assets as an actress was her 'extraordinary voice... it was so listenable.' Although Massey's parts were varied, her 'cut-glass English accent, conveyed a cold and repressed character on screen'. On the stage, a number of her performances were said to be characterised by 'stillness', such as the National Theatre's production of Harold Pinter's A Kind of Alaska.

She was known for a high level of preparation and effort, with one producer saying that she had a practice of using five different coloured pens on scripts to mark out 'breaths and pauses' and the development of a scene, for example 'if a phrase early in a paragraph was going to be picked up again later, she would highlight those two bits in the same colour, so that it would remind her that that first phrase was referring to something later.'

Personal life

In the New Year's Honours List published 31 December 2004 she was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to drama.

She published an autobiography in 2006, Telling Some Tales, which revealed a difficult early life and her failed marriage to actor Jeremy Brett (who struggled with bipolar disorder), their son, writer David Raymond William Huggins (b. 1959), her successful second marriage in 1988 to Russian scientist Uri Andres and of being a grandmother. Massey was quoted as saying, "Theatre eats up too much of your family life. I have a grandson and a husband and I'd rather I was able to be a granny and a wife."

Death

Massey died from cancer on 3 July 2011, aged 73. She is survived by her son, grandson and second husband.

Selected filmography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Massey#Selected_filmography

Books

Massey, Anna (2006). Telling Some Tales. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-179645-8.