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Joan Plowright, celebrated star of stage and screen, dies aged 95

Actor helped shape British postwar theatre through her performances at the Royal Court, National Theatre and West End

At the National, she played Portia to Olivier’s Shylock in The Merchant of Venice as well as roles including Masha in Three Sisters, Sonya in Uncle Vanya and the eponymous heroine of Shaw’s Saint Joan. After appearing in a late-night revue in London she made her stage debut in 1948 in Croydon in a show called If Four Walls Told and then joined the Old Vic theatre company, where she met the actor Roger Gage, whom she later married. There followed roles in an adaptation of Beryl Bainbridge’s The Dressmaker, the offbeat comedy I Love You to Death and Enchanted April, which was filmed in Portofino on the Italian Riviera and brought her an Oscar nomination for her performance as an imperious widow.

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