For the musician, see Gene Simmons.
Jean Merilyn Simmons, OBE (born January 31, 1929) is an Oscar-nominated English actress.
She was born in Crouch Hill, London, England, United Kingdom, and was named an Officer in the Order of the British Empire in 2003. She was married twice; in 1950 to Stewart Granger, divorcing in 1960, and again in 1960 to Richard Brooks divorcing him in 1977. Simmons has two daughters, Tracy Granger and Kate Brooks, one from each marriage.
Simmons began acting while still in her teens. Her first major film was Great Expectations, in which she played the young Estella. In 1948, she was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as Ophelia in Hamlet, opposite Laurence Olivier.
In 1950, she married the British actor Stewart Granger, with whom she appeared in several films, successfully making the transition to Hollywood. Among her best-known leading roles are The Egyptian (1954),Guys and Dolls (1955), Elmer Gantry (directed by her second husband, Richard Brooks), Spartacus, and The Happy Ending, again directed by Brooks and for which she received her second Oscar nomination.
By the 1970s, her screen career had tapered off and Simmons turned to stage and television acting. She toured the U.S. in the well-reviewed A Little Night Music, then took the show to London. For her appearance in the mini-series The Thorn Birds, she won an Emmy Award. In 1989, she again starred in a miniseries version of Great Expectations, where she performed the role of Miss Havisham, Estella's adoptive mother, as well as in 1985 and 1986 in North & South.
Jean Simmons would make a late career appearance in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Drumhead" where she portrays a witch hunt inspiring investigator named Admiral Nora Satie.
