Jean Simmons

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Birthday:

31 January 1929, Crouch Hill, London, England, UK

Birth Name:

Jean Merilyn Simmons

Height:

163 cm

Demure British beauty Jean Simmons was born January 31, 1929 in Crouch End, London. As a 14-year-old dance student, she was plucked from her school to play Margaret Lockwood's precocious sister in Give Us the Moon (1944), and she went on to make a name for herself in such major British productions as Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), Great Expectations (1946) (as the spoiled, selfish Estella), Black Narcissus (1947) (as a sultry native beauty), Hamlet (1948) (playing Ophelia to Laurence Olivier's great Dane and earning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination), The Blue Lagoon (1949) and So Long at the Fair (1950), among others.In 1950, she married actor Stewart Granger, and that same year, starred in the Frank Sinatra/Marlon Brando musical Guys and Dolls (1955); she used her own singing voice and earned her first Golden Globe Award. Simmons divorced Granger in 1960 and almost immediately married writer-director Richard Brooks, who cast her as Sister Sharon opposite Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry (1960), a memorable adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel. That same year, she co-starred with Kirk Douglas in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (1960) and played a would-be homewrecker opposite Cary Grant in The Grass Is Greener (1960).Off the screen for a few years, Jean captivated moviegoers with a brilliant performance as the mother in All the Way Home (1963), a literate, tasteful adaptation of James Agee's "A Death in the Family". However, after that, she found quality projects somewhat harder to come by, and took work in Life at the Top (1965), Mister Buddwing (1966), Divorce American Style (1967), Rough Night in Jericho (1967), The Happy Ending (1969) (a Richard Brooks film for which she was again Oscar-nominated, this time as Best Actress).Jean continued making films well into the 1970s. In the 1980s, she appeared mainly in television miniseries, such as North and South (1985) and The Thorn Birds (1983). She made a comeback to films in 1995 in How to Make an American Quilt (1995) co-starring Winona Ryder and Anne Bancroft, and most recently played the elderly Sophie in the English version of Hayao Miyazaki's Hauru no ugoku shiro (2004). She now resided in Santa Monica, California, with her dog, Mr. Gates, and her two cats, Adisson and Megan. Jean Simmons died of lung cancer on January 22, 2010, nine days before her 81st birthday. Show less «

[on Spartacus (1960)] Making Spartacus was enough acting to last anybody a lifetime. You know, after we had been filming a year Kirk Douglas...Show more »

[on Spartacus (1960)] Making Spartacus was enough acting to last anybody a lifetime. You know, after we had been filming a year Kirk Douglas sent me a magnum of champagne with a little note saying, "I hope our second year will be as happy as our first.". Show less «

[on working with William Wyler in The Big Country (1958)] The atmosphere [on set] felt very dodgy - the sort of prevailing tension that invi...Show more »

[on working with William Wyler in The Big Country (1958)] The atmosphere [on set] felt very dodgy - the sort of prevailing tension that invites paranoia, causes you to wonder, "What have I done?"... I guess Willy was in a position to know what it took to achieve great performances, but he also seemed bent on making things difficult... and there was all that constant rewriting. We'd have our lines learned, then receive a rewrite, stay up all night learning the new version, then receive yet another rewrite the following morning. It made the acting damned near impossible. In Willy's favor, he was very agreeable in allowing me to think, and think, and think, and then think some more before I made my reply to [Gregory Peck's] offer. I felt a prompt answer would not serve the moment, and Willy proved most open and agreeable on that count. He could make you worry - order take after take without ever telling you what you were doing to provoke the retakes - he could also cause you to feel a sense of collaboration. Show less «

[on Spartacus (1960)] I remember a long, long day of filming and it took forever to get Kirk Douglas up on his cross. We played a terrible j...Show more »

[on Spartacus (1960)] I remember a long, long day of filming and it took forever to get Kirk Douglas up on his cross. We played a terrible joke on him when, as he was safely installed, the assistant director called lunch and left him up there. He could have had the lot of us fired but he was very good about it. You have to have a sense of humor in this industry. Show less «

[on the studio system] I had to do four pictures for [Howard Hughes], and then I was free. I never signed a contract with a studio after.

My career has had a lot of ups and downs, but basically it has been wonderful.

If I hadn't gone to dancing school, I would have married and had children like my mum and had a normal life.

Every actress has to face the facts there are younger, more beautiful girls right behind you. Once you've gone beyond the vanity of the busi...Show more »

Every actress has to face the facts there are younger, more beautiful girls right behind you. Once you've gone beyond the vanity of the business, you'll take on the tough roles. Show less «

[on her first Academy Award Nomination in 1949] I didn't even know what an Oscar was at the time.