Celia Johnson | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Celia Elizabeth Johnson (1908-12-18)18 December 1908 |
| Died | 26 April 1982(1982-04-26) (aged 73) Nettlebed,Oxfordshire, England |
| Education | St Paul's Girls' School |
| Years active | 1928–1982 |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3, includingLucy |
Dame Celia Elizabeth Johnson (18 December 1908 – 26 April 1982) was an English actress, whose career included stage, television and film.[1] She is especially known for her roles in the filmsIn Which We Serve (1942),This Happy Breed (1944),Brief Encounter (1945) andThe Captain's Paradise (1953). ForBrief Encounter, she was nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Actress. A six-timeBAFTA Award nominee, she won theBAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role forThe Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969).
Johnson began her stage acting career in 1928, and subsequently achieved success inWest End andBroadway productions. She continued performing in theatre for the rest of her life, though much of her later work was in television, including winning theBAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for theBBCPlay for Today,Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (1973). She suffered astroke in 1982 and died later the same day, aged 73.
Born inRichmond, Surrey, and nicknamed "Betty", Johnson was the second daughter of John Robert Johnson and Ethel (née Griffiths) Johnson. Her first public performance was in 1916, when she played a role in a charity performance ofKing Cophetua and the Beggar Maid to raise funds for returnedFirst World War soldiers.[citation needed]
She attendedSt Paul's Girls' School in London from 1919 until 1926, and played the oboe in the school's orchestra underGustav Holst. She acted in school productions, but had no other acting experience, when she was accepted to study atRoyal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1926, where she was in the same class asMargaretta Scott. She later spent a term in Paris, studying underPierre Fresnay at theComédie Française.[2] She later recalled her choice of an acting career with the comment, "I thought I'd rather like it. It was the only thing I was good at. And I thought it might be rather wicked."[3]
Her stage début, and first professional role, was as Sarah inGeorge Bernard Shaw'sMajor Barbara at theTheatre Royal, Huddersfield in 1928. She went to London the following year to take the place ofAngela Baddeley in the part of Currita inA Hundred Years Old, which was performed at theLyric Theatre inHammersmith. In 1930 Johnson played inCynara withSir Gerald Du Maurier andDame Gladys Cooper. She made her first trip to the United States the following year to star asOphelia in a New York City production ofHamlet.[citation needed]
She returned to London, where she appeared in a number of minor productions, before establishing herself with a two-year run inThe Wind and the Rain (1933–35).[4] She married the journalistPeter Fleming in 1935, and in 1939 gave birth to their first child, a son.[4] Her theatre career flourished with her portrayals ofElizabeth Bennet inPride and Prejudice (1940) and the second Mrs. de Winter inRebecca (1940); the production of the latter was halted when the theatre was destroyed by aLuftwaffe bomb in September 1940.[citation needed]
During theSecond World War Johnson lived with her widowed sister and sister-in-law, and helped care for their combined seven children. Unable to commit her time to the often lengthy run of a play, Johnson preferred the less time-consuming schedules of film and radio,[3] which allowed her to devote time to her family and her work for the Women's Auxiliary Police Corps.[4] She appeared inIn Which We Serve (1942) andThis Happy Breed (1944), both directed byDavid Lean and written byNoël Coward.
Lean and Coward sought Johnson for the next production,Brief Encounter (1945). She accepted the role with misgivings because of her family responsibilities, but was interested in the part, writing to her husband, "There is no getting away from the fact that it is a very good part and one which I should love to play. I have found myself already planning how I should play bits and how I should say lines..."[3] A romantic drama about a conventional middle-class housewife who falls in love with a married doctor she meets in the refreshment room at a railway station, the film was well-received, and is now regarded as a classic. Johnson was awarded theNew York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress and was nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Actress.
After the war, Johnson concentrated on her family life, which included two daughters born in 1946 and 1947 and her occasional acting work was secondary for the following decade.[4]
In 1957 she acted withRalph Richardson inThe Flowering Cherry.[4] In 1958, she openedThe Grass is Greener.[5] As a member ofLaurence Olivier'sNational Theatre Company, Johnson appeared in the playsThe Master Builder (1964) (with Olivier) andHay Fever (1965), and later reprised her roles in the television productions.[4]
For her role inThe Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), she received the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She was created a Commander of theOrder of the British Empire (CBE) in 1958, "for services to the theatre",[4] and was raised to Dame Commander (DBE) in 1981.
Johnson was married to Peter Fleming (who during the Second World War became a Lieutenant Colonel in theSpecial Operations Executive, and who was known as the author of travel literature such asBrazilian Adventure and non-fiction works includingthe Siege at Peking) from 1935 until Fleming's death from a heart attack in 1971, while on a shooting expedition nearGlencoe inArgyll, Scotland. He was the brother of theJames Bond creator, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve Commander, and MI6-SIS Information Research Division (IRD) spyIan Fleming.
They had three children:
Since the late 1990s, the two sisters, Kate Grimond and Lucy Fleming, have co-owned the Ian Fleming estate.[citation needed]
Johnson distanced herself from her acting career while her children were young, preferring to devote her attention to her family. She was described as a woman "always ready to laugh" and "maternal in a light-hearted way" and her daughter recalled that she was often torn between her desire to care for her family and her need to be involved in the "mechanics" of acting.[3]
In 1982, she was touring with SirRalph Richardson inAngela Huth'sThe Understanding and the play'sWest End run had been announced. On one of her days off, she was at her home in Nettlebed, Oxfordshire, playingbridge with friends, when she collapsed from astroke. She died a few hours later in her home.[3] She left an estate worth £150,557.[7]
On 18 December 2008, to mark the centenary of her birth, ablue plaque was unveiled at her childhood home inRichmond. Among the guests at the ceremony were her daughters,Lucy Fleming and Kate Grimond. InThe Times, Grimond noted that the "tragedy of theatre" is that even the best performances fade from memory, and that her mother's current reputation rests almost entirely on her performance inBrief Encounter. Grimond noted that the advent of video allowed the film to be seen by a new audience, and that modern appraisals of the film had led to its being regarded as a classic.[3]
