Wendy Hiller

Dame Wendy Margaret Hiller (15 August 1912 – 14 May 2003) was an English stage and film actress whose career spanned nearly six decades, earning her a reputation as one of Britain’s most respected dramatic talents. Born in Bramhall, Cheshire, she was the daughter of cotton manufacturer Frank Watkin Hiller and Marie Stone, and received her education at Winceby House School and Oriel Bank High School before joining the Manchester Repertory Company at age eighteen, where she honed both acting and stage‑management skills. Her breakthrough came in 1934 as Sally Hardcastle in the socially charged play Love on the Dole, a role that propelled her to the West End in 1935 and caught the eye of playwright George Bernard Shaw, who later cast her in several of his own works, including Saint Joan, Pygmalion and Major Barbara. Hiller’s film debut arrived in 1937 with Lancashire Luck, but it was Shaw’s 1938 screen adaptation of Pygmalion that secured her first Academy Award nomination and made her the first British actress nominated for an Oscar for a British film. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s she balanced a relentless stage schedule—originating roles such as Catherine Sloper in The Heiress on Broadway and starring in revivals of Ibsen and Henry James adaptations—with selective, high‑profile film work, winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Separate Tables (1958) and garnering further nominations for A Man for All Seasons (1966). In addition to her theatrical triumphs, Hiller appeared on television, narrated BBC’s Jackanory, and remained an influential mentor to emerging actors, serving as president of the Chiltern Shakespeare Company. Her personal life was marked by a long marriage to playwright Ronald Gow, with whom she raised two children, and a steadfast preference for privacy, insisting on being called Mrs. Gow off‑stage. Honoured as an OBE in 1971 and elevated to DBE in 1975, she retired in 1992 and spent her final years in Beaconsfield, where she passed away at the age of ninety.