25 Facts About Geraldine McEwan

Geraldine McEwan was nominated for the 1998 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for The Chairs.

Geraldine McEwan won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the 1990 television serial Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and from 2004 to 2009, she starred as the Agatha Christie sleuth Miss Marple, in the ITV series Marple.

Geraldine McEwan was born Geraldine McKeown on 9 May 1932 in Old Windsor, Berkshire, England, to Donald and Norah McKeown.

Geraldine McEwan had Irish ancestors; her maternal grandfather came from Kilkenny while her paternal grandfather came from Belfast.

Geraldine McEwan later simplified the spelling of her last name from McKeown to McEwan.

Geraldine McEwan won a scholarship to attend Windsor County Girls' School, then a private school where she felt completely out of place, and took elocution lessons.

Geraldine McEwan made her first appearance on the Windsor stage in October 1946 as an attendant of Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream and played many parts with the Windsor Repertory Company from March 1949 to March 1951, including a role in the Ruth Gordon biographical play Years Ago opposite guest player John Clark.

Geraldine McEwan first appeared on television in a BBC series, Crime on Our Hands, with Jack Watling, Dennis Price and Sonia Dresdel.

Geraldine McEwan appeared at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon during the late 1950s and early 1960s, during the period when it was evolving into the Stratford venue for the new Royal Shakespeare Company formed in 1960, and at The Aldwych, the RSC's original London home.

Geraldine McEwan returned to the theatre in 1961 to portray Ophelia in Hamlet, opposite Ian Bannen as the Prince, and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing with Christopher Plummer as Benedict.

Geraldine McEwan appeared with Olivier in Dance of Death, staged by Glen Byam Shaw and first performed in February 1967.

Until her roles in the plays by Strindberg and Webster, Geraldine McEwan was viewed mainly as a comedian, but these parts were thought to have extended her range.

Geraldine McEwan took the lead role in an adaptation for Scottish Television of Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Geraldine McEwan was Spark's favourite in the role and came the closest to the character as Spark had imagined it; Brodie has been portrayed on stage and screen by Vanessa Redgrave and Maggie Smith.

In 1983, Geraldine McEwan played Mrs Malaprop in a production of Sheridan's The Rivals at the National Theatre by Peter Wood which featured Michael Hordern as Sir Anthony Absolute.

Geraldine McEwan made her directorial debut, in 1988, with the Renaissance Theatre Company's touring season, Renaissance Shakespeare on the Road, co-produced with the Birmingham Rep, and ending with a three-month repertory programme at the Phoenix Theatre in London.

Geraldine McEwan's contribution was a light romantic staging of As You Like It, with Kenneth Branagh playing Touchstone as an Edwardian music hall comedian.

Geraldine McEwan won another Evening Standard Best Actress Award in 1995 for her role as Lady Wishfort in a revival of Congreve's The Way of the World, again at the National Theatre.

Geraldine McEwan was in the Cassandra episode of Red Dwarf, playing a prescient computer.

Geraldine McEwan played the demented witch Mortianna in the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

Geraldine McEwan was selected by Granada Television for Marple, a new series featuring the Agatha Christie sleuth Miss Marple.

Geraldine McEwan was succeeded as Miss Marple in the series by Julia McKenzie.

In 1953, Geraldine McEwan married Hugh Cruttwell, whom she had first met when she was 14 years old, while working at the Theatre Royal, Windsor.

Geraldine McEwan was reported to have declined an OBE and later, a DBE, but she did not respond to these claims.

Geraldine McEwan died on 30 January 2015 at the Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith, aged 82, after suffering a stroke three months earlier.