Jean Merilyn Simmons, OBE was a British actress.
One of J. Arthur Rank's 'well-spoken young starlets,' she appeared predominantly in films,
beginning with those made in Great Britain during and after the Second World War, followed
mainly by Hollywood films from 1950 onwards.
Early life and career Simmons was born in Lower Holloway, London
to Charles Simmons and his wife, Winifred Simmons.
Jean was the youngest of four children with siblings Edna, Harold and Lorna.
She began acting at the age of 14.
During the Second World War, the Simmons family was evacuated to Winscombe, Somerset.
Her father, a physical education teacher, taught briefly at Sidcot School, and sometime
during this period Simmons followed her elder sister on to the village stage and sang songs
such as "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow".
Returning to London and just enrolled at the Aida Foster School of Dance, she was spotted
by the director Val Guest, who cast her in the Margaret Lockwood vehicle Give Us the
Moon.
Small roles in several other films followed including the high profile Caesar and Cleopatra,
produced by Gabriel Pascal.
Pascal saw potential in Simmons and in 1945 he signed her to a seven-year contract.
Prior to moving to Hollywood, she played the young Estella in David Lean's version of Great
Expectations and Ophelia in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet, for which she received her first Oscar
nomination.
She played an Indian girl in the Powell-Pressburger film Black Narcissus.
It was the experience of working on Great Expectations that caused her to pursue an
acting career more seriously:
I thought acting was just a lark, meeting all those exciting movie stars, and getting
£5 a day which was lovely because we needed the money.
But I figured I'd just go off and get married and have children like my mother.
It was working with David Lean that convinced me to go on.
Playing Ophelia to Olivier's Hamlet made her a star while still in her teens, although
she was already well known for her work in other British films, including her first starring
role in the film adaptation of Uncle Silas, and Black Narcissus.
Olivier offered her the chance to work and study at the Bristol Old Vic, advising her
to play anything they threw at her to get experience; she was under contract to the
Rank Organisation who vetoed the idea.
In 1949 Simmons starred with Stewart Granger in Adam and Evelyne.
In 1950 she was voted the fourth most popular star in Britain.
In 1951 Rank sold her contract to Howard Hughes, who then owned the RKO Pictures.
In 1950 she married Stewart Granger, with whom she appeared in several films, and the
transition to an American career began.
She made four films for Hughes, including Angel Face, directed by Otto Preminger.
According to David Thomson "if she had made only one film – Angel Face – she might
now be spoken of with the awe given to Louise Brooks."
A court case freed her from the contract with Hughes in 1952.
In 1953 she starred alongside Spencer Tracy in The Actress, a film that was one of her
personal favourites.
Among the many films she appeared in during this period were The Robe, Young Bess, Désirée,
The Egyptian, Guys and Dolls, The Big Country, Elmer Gantry,, Spartacus, All the Way Home
and The Happy Ending, for which she received her second Oscar nomination.
In the opinion of film critic Philip French, Home Before Dark saw her give "perhaps her
finest performance as a housewife driven into a breakdown in Mervyn LeRoy's psychodrama".
By the 1970s Simmons turned her focus to stage and television acting.
She toured the United States in Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, then took the show to
London, and thus originated the role of Desirée Armfeldt in the West End.
Performing in the show for three years, she said she never tired of Sondheim's music;
"No matter how tired or off you felt, the music would just pick you up."
She portrayed Fiona "Fee" Cleary, the Cleary family matriarch, in the 1983 mini-series,
The Thorn Birds; she won an Emmy Award for her role.
In 1985-86 she appeared in North & South, again playing the role of the family matriarch
as Clarissa Main.
In 1988 she starred in The Dawning with Anthony Hopkins and Hugh Grant, and in 1989 she appeared
in a remake of Great Expectations, in which she played the role of Miss Havisham, Estella's
adoptive mother.
She made a late career appearance in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Drumhead"
as a retired Starfleet admiral and hardened legal investigator who conducts a witch-hunt.
In 1991 she appeared in the short-lived revival of the 1960s daytime series Dark Shadows,
in roles originally played by Joan Bennett.
From 1994 until 1998 Simmons narrated the A&E documentary television series, Mysteries
of the Bible.
In 2004 Simmons voiced the lead-role of Sophie in the English dub of Howl's Moving Castle.
Personal life Jean Simmons was married and divorced twice.
She married Stewart Granger in Tucson, Arizona, on December 20, 1950.
In 1956 she and Granger became U.S. citizens; they divorced in 1960.
On November 1, 1960, she married director Richard Brooks; they divorced in 1977.
Although both men were significantly older than Simmons, she denied she was looking for
a father figure.
Her father had died when she was just 16 but she said: "They were really nothing like my
father at all.
My father was a gentle, softly-spoken man.
My husbands were much noisier and much more opinionated ... it's really nothing to do
with age ... it's to do with what's there – the twinkle and sense of humour."
And in a 1984 interview, given in Copenhagen at the time she was shooting the film Yellow
Pages, she elaborated slightly on her marriages, stating,
It may be simplistic, but you could sum up my two marriages by saying that, when I wanted
to be a wife, Jimmy would say: "I just want you to be pretty."
And when I wanted to cook, Richard would say: "Forget the cooking.
You've been trained to act – so act!"
Most people thought I was helpless – a clinger and a butterfly – during my first
marriage.
It was Richard Brooks who saw what was wrong and tried to make me stand on my own two feet.
I'd whine: 'I'm afraid.'
And he'd say: 'Never be afraid to fail.
Every time you get up in the morning, you are ahead.'
She had two daughters, Tracy Granger and Kate Brooks, one by each marriage – their names
bearing witness to Simmons' friendship with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.
Simmons moved to the East Coast in the late 1970s, briefly owning a home in New Milford,
Connecticut.
Later she returned to California, settling in Santa Monica, where she lived until her
death.
Death She died from lung cancer at her home on January
22, 2010, nine days before her 81st birthday, surrounded by her family.
Release Throughout her life Simmons spoke out publicly
about her struggle with addiction, and in 2003 became the patron of the British drugs
and human rights charity Release.
She was an active supporter of their campaigns for just, humane and effective drug policies,
recognising that many of those with drug problems cannot afford the luxurious facilities available
to celebrities.
In 2005 she signed a petition to the British Prime Minister Tony Blair asking him not to
upgrade cannabis from a class C drug to a class B.
Filmography Box office ranking
For a number of years, British film exhibitors voted her among the top ten British stars
at the box office via an annual poll in the Motion Picture Herald.
1949 – 4th 1950 – 2nd
1951 – 3rd Awards and nominations
References
External links Jean Simmons at the Internet Movie Database
Jean Simmons at Memory Alpha Jean Simmons at the TCM Movie Database
The Jean Simmons Memorial YouTube Page Jean Simmons – A Fan Resource
Jean Simmons 1946 newsreel footage from British Pathe
Jean Simmons in motorboat Britlsh Pathe Obituary in The New York Times
In Appreciation of Jean Simmons Photographs and literature