Dame Edith Mary Evans DBE (8 February 1888–14 October 1976) was an Academy Award nominated and Golden Globe award winning actress.
Born in London, the daughter of Edward Evans, a civil servant, and his wife, Caroline Ellen Foster. She was educated at St Michael's Church of England School, Pimlico, before being apprenticed at the age of 15 in 1903 as a milliner.
Her first stage appearance was with Miss Massey's Streatham Shakespeare Players in the role of Viola in Twelfth Night in October 1910. In 1912 she was discovered by the noted producer William Poel and made her first professional appearance for Poel in August of that year, playing the role of Gautami in an obscure sixth-century Hindu classic, Sakuntala. She received much attention with her performance as Cressida in Troilus and Cressida in London and subsequently at Stratford upon Avon.
Her distinguished career which spanned sixty years and during which she played over 150 different roles, included numerous works by Shakespeare, Congreve, Ibsen, Wycherley, Wilde, and contemporary playwrights including Shaw, Enid Bagnold, Christopher Fry and Coward. She created six of the characters of George Bernard Shaw: the Serpent, the Oracle, the She-Ancient, and the Ghost of the Serpent in Back to Methuselah (1923); Orinthia in The Apple Cart (1929); and Epifania in The Millionairess (1940). Other performances which many considered definitive were as Millamant in The Way of the World (1924), Rosalind in As You Like It (1926 and 1936), the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet (1932, 1934, 1935, and 1961), and, most notably, as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of being Earnest (1939), a role with which she became identified in the public's mind. In 1964 she appeared as Judith Bliss in the revival of Hay Fever by Noel Coward and directed by Coward, himself, at the National Theatre.
She had begun her film career in 1915, but was noted mostly for her stage work until she appeared in the 1949 film The Last Days of Dolwyn. From then until close to her death, she made several acclaimed films, including the following:
Edith Evans also made many television appearances
Walter Sickert painted Edith Evans as Katharina, the lead character in Shakespeare's romantic comedy, The Taming of the Shrew. A sculpted head of her was for many years on display at the Royal Court Theatre, London.
Edith Evans was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1946. She also received four honorary degrees from the universities of London (1950), Cambridge (1951), Oxford (1954), and Hull (1968).
Her ashes rest at St Paul's, Covent Garden, London. There is a blue plaque outside her house at 109 Ebury Street, London.
In the 1997 movie Love! Valour! Compassion!, Jason Alexander's (homosexual) character declares, presumably tongue-in-cheek, that Dame Edith Evans and Deborah Kerr are the only heterosexual British actresses.
