37 Facts About Jean Simmons

1.

Jean Simmons won an Emmy Award for the miniseries The Thorn Birds.

2.

Jean Simmons was born on 31 January 1929, in Islington, London, to Charles Jean Simmons, a bronze medalist in gymnastics at the 1912 Summer Olympics, and his wife, Winifred Ada.

3.

Jean Simmons was the youngest of four children, with siblings Lorna, Harold, and Edna.

4.

On her return to London, Jean Simmons enrolled at the Aida Foster School of Dance.

5.

Jean Simmons was spotted by director Val Guest, who cast her in the Margaret Lockwood vehicle Give Us the Moon in a large role as Lockwood's sister.

6.

Jean Simmons had a small part as a harpist in the high-profile Caesar and Cleopatra, produced by Gabriel Pascal, starring Vivien Leigh, and co-starring Jean Simmons's future husband Stewart Granger.

7.

Jean Simmons became a star in Britain when she was cast as the young Estella in David Lean's version of Great Expectations.

8.

The movie was the third-most popular film at the British box office in 1947, and Jean Simmons received excellent reviews.

9.

Jean Simmons had support roles in Hungry Hill with Margaret Lockwood and the Powell-Pressburger film Black Narcissus, playing an Indian woman in the latter alongside Sabu.

10.

Jean Simmons was top-billed for the first time in the drama Uncle Silas.

11.

Jean Simmons followed it with The Woman in the Hall.

12.

Jean Simmons had the lead in Frank Launder's The Blue Lagoon, based on the novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole and co-produced with Launder's partner Sidney Gilliat, a project originally announced for Lockwood a decade earlier.

13.

Jean Simmons starred with Stewart Granger in the comedy Adam and Evelyne.

14.

Jean Simmons made two films that were popular at the local box office: So Long at the Fair with Dirk Bogarde and Trio, where she was one of several stars.

15.

Jean Simmons was then in Cage of Gold with David Farrar and Ralph Thomas' The Clouded Yellow with Trevor Howard.

16.

In 1950, Jean Simmons was voted the fourth-most popular star in Britain.

17.

Granger became a Hollywood star in King Solomon's Mines and was signed to a contract by MGM, so Jean Simmons moved to Los Angeles with him.

18.

Jean Simmons made her appear in She Couldn't Say No, a comedy with Mitchum.

19.

Jean Simmons would make an additional picture for 20th Century Fox while RKO got the services of Victor Mature for one film.

20.

Jean Simmons went back to RKO to do the extra film under the settlement with Hughes, titled Affair with a Stranger with Mature; it flopped.

21.

Jean Simmons went over to 20th Century Fox to play the female lead in The Robe, the first CinemaScope movie and an enormous financial success.

22.

Jean Simmons had the lead in Columbia's A Bullet Is Waiting.

23.

Jean Simmons played the title role in Hilda Crane at Fox, a box-office disappointment.

24.

Jean Simmons had a big success, though, in The Big Country, directed by William Wyler.

25.

Jean Simmons starred in Home Before Dark at Warner Bros.

26.

Jean Simmons went into Elmer Gantry, directed by Richard Brooks, who became her second husband.

27.

Jean Simmons then did The Grass Is Greener with Mitchum, Cary Grant, and Deborah Kerr.

28.

Jean Simmons took some years off screen, then returned in All the Way Home with Robert Preston.

29.

Jean Simmons did Heidi for TV, then Brooks wrote and directed The Happy Ending for her, and she received her second Oscar nomination.

30.

Jean Simmons toured the United States in Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, then took the show to London, thus originated the role of Desiree Armfeldt in the West End.

31.

Jean Simmons portrayed Fiona "Fee" Cleary, the Cleary family matriarch, in the miniseries The Thorn Birds ; she won an Emmy Award for her role.

32.

Jean Simmons appeared in North and South, again playing the role of the family matriarch as Clarissa Main, and starred in The Dawning with Anthony Hopkins and Hugh Grant.

33.

In 1989, Jean Simmons appeared as murder mystery author Eudora McVeigh Shipton, a self proclaimed rival to Jessica Fletcher, in the two part Murder, She Wrote episode "Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall" with Angela Lansbury.

34.

On 1 November 1960, Jean Simmons married director Richard Brooks; their daughter, Kate Brooks, was born a year later in 1961.

35.

Jean Simmons moved to the East Coast of the US in the late 1970s, briefly owning a home in New Milford, Connecticut.

36.

Jean Simmons returned to California, settling in Santa Monica, California, where she lived until her death.

37.

Jean Simmons died from lung cancer at her home in Santa Monica on 22 January 2010, nine days before her 81st birthday.