1. Dame Wendy Margaret Hiller was an English film and stage actress who enjoyed a varied acting career that spanned nearly 60 years.
23 Facts About Wendy Hiller
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Wendy Hiller won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Separate Tables.
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Wendy Hiller earned further Oscar nominations for Best Actress in Pygmalion and Best Supporting Actress in A Man for All Seasons.
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Wendy Hiller first found success as slum dweller Sally Hardcastle in the stage version of Love on the Dole in 1934.
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The huge popularity of Love on the Dole took the production to New York in 1936, where Wendy Hiller's performance attracted the attention of George Bernard Shaw.
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Wendy Hiller was reputed to be Shaw's favourite actress of the time.
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In 1947, Wendy Hiller originated the role of Catherine Sloper, the painfully shy, vulnerable spinster in The Heiress on Broadway.
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On returning to London, Wendy Hiller again played the role in the West End production in 1950.
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Wendy Hiller performed in a two-year run of N C Hunter's Waters of the Moon alongside Sybil Thorndike and Edith Evans.
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In 1957, Wendy Hiller returned to New York to star as Josie Hogan in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten, a performance that gained her a Tony Award nomination as Best Dramatic Actress.
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Wendy Hiller later revisited some earlier plays playing older characters, as in West End revivals of Waters of the Moon with Ingrid Bergman and The Aspern Papers with Vanessa Redgrave.
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Wendy Hiller was scheduled to return to the American stage in a 1982 revival of Anastasia with Natalie Wood, but Wood died just weeks before rehearsals.
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Wendy Hiller made her final West End performance in the title role in Driving Miss Daisy.
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Wendy Hiller followed up this success with another Shaw adaptation, Major Barbara with Rex Harrison and Robert Morley.
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Wendy Hiller won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1959 for the film Separate Tables as a lonely hotel manager and mistress of Burt Lancaster.
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Wendy Hiller reprised her London stage role in the Southern Gothic Toys in the Attic, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination as the elder spinster sister in a film that stars Dean Martin and Geraldine Page.
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Wendy Hiller received a third Oscar nomination for her performance as the simple, unrefined but dignified Lady Alice More, opposite Paul Scofield as Thomas More, in A Man for All Seasons.
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Wendy Hiller made numerous television appearances, in both Britain and the United States.
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In Britain during the 1960s, Wendy Hiller gained critical acclaim for a guest appearance in a 1964 episode of the police drama Z-Cars, appeared in the drama series Play of the Month, and in 1965 was the narrator for five episodes of the BBC children's television programme Jackanory, reading the stories of Alison Uttley.
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Ronald Gow died in 1993, but Wendy Hiller continued living at their home until her death a decade later.
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In 1996, Wendy Hiller was honoured by the London Film Critics Circle with the Dilys Powell Award for excellence in British film.
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Wendy Hiller's style was disciplined and unpretentious, and she disliked personal publicity.
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Wendy Hiller spent the last decade of her life in quiet retirement at her home in Beaconsfield, where she died of natural causes at the age of 90.