Ada "Zoe" Caldwell, OBE (born September 14, 1933) is an Australian-born actress.
She was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia and lived in the suburb of Balwyn on Yongala Street. Her father was a plumber and her mother was a taxi dancer.
Zoe had a Peugeot of 1950 vintage. She would often load some of the neighbourhood kids into it to take them to the Elizabethan Theatre in Richmond where they would go backstage and watch rehearsals and performances.
She has won four Tony Awards for her performances on Broadway in Slapstick Tragedy, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Medea and Master Class. In the last she portrayed opera diva Maria Callas. In Stratford, Ontario she played the role of Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra.
Other Broadway credits include The Creation of the World and Other Business and Macbeth. She has also appeared on film, most notably as an imperious dowager in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo.
Zoe Caldwell was married in 1968 to Canadian-born Broadway producer Robert Whitehead, a cousin of actor Hume Cronyn. They had two sons and were married until Whitehead's death in 2002. She has not remarried. The novelist Patrick White dedicated his short story, Clay to her and Barry Humphries.
