12 Facts About Jill Esmond

Jill Esmond Moore was an English stage and screen actress.

Jill Esmond had a brother Jack and a sister, Lynette, who did not survive infancy.

Jill Esmond made her stage debut playing Wendy to Gladys Cooper's Peter Pan, but her success was short-lived.

When her father died suddenly in 1922, in Paris, due to pneumonia, Jill Esmond returned to school and at the time considered abandoning her ambition to act.

In 1928, Esmond appeared in the production of Bird in the Hand, where she met fellow cast member Laurence Olivier for the first time.

Jill Esmond appeared in two Broadway productions with Olivier, Private Lives in 1931 with Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence and The Green Bay Tree in 1933.

Jill Esmond's career continued to ascend while Olivier's own career languished, but after a couple of years, when his career began to show promise, she began to refuse roles.

Jill Esmond had been promised a role by David O Selznick in A Bill of Divorcement but at only half-salary.

Olivier had discovered that Katharine Hepburn had been offered a much greater salary, and persuaded Jill Esmond to turn down the role.

Jill Esmond starred in the Broadway production of Emlyn Williams' play The Morning Star in 1942, a production which featured the acting debut of Gregory Peck.

Jill Esmond's acting appearances grew more sporadic with the passage of time, and she made her final film appearance in 1955, around the time she made her two appearances as Eleanor of Aquitaine in the TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Jill Esmond was 82 years old when she died on 28 July 1990 in Wandsworth, London.