OBE for actress Jean Simmons

Published on Tuesday 31 December 2002 00:00

THE screen actress Jean Simmons receives an OBE in the New Year Honours List.

The British-born star, one of Hollywood’s most popular leading ladies in the Forties and Fifties, is honoured for her services to acting.

She earned her first Oscar nomination for her role in Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet, aged 19.

Simmons, who is now approaching her 74th birthday, continues to work, mostly doing voice-overs.

Simmons was born in January 1929 in the north west London suburb of Cricklewood. Her career began at the age of 14, when she was spotted at a dance class and cast in the film Give Us The Moon.

Three years later she won the part of young Estella in Great Expectations, playing opposite Alec Guinness.

Films including Black Narcissus followed, and in 1948 she landed the role of Ophelia to Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet.

It earned her the first of two Oscar nominations and established her as a highly sought after actress in Hollywood.

"I didn’t even know what an Oscar was at the time," she later recalled.

The Fifties were Simmons’ heyday, with starring roles in The Robe, with Richard Burton, Angel Face alongside Robert Mitchum, Guys and Dolls with Marlon Brando and The Big Country with Gregory Peck.

In 1950 she married Stewart Granger, one of Britain’s most popular actors, and they appeared together in the 1953 film Young Bess, where she played Queen Elizabeth I.

Her career peak came in 1960, with the release of three hit films including Spartacus with Kirk Douglas, and The Grass Is Greener with Robert Mitchum. She divorced the following year and wed director Richard Brooks, a marriage that lasted 17 years.

In 1970 she earned a second Oscar nomination for her lead role as alienated housewife Mary Wilson in The Happy Ending. She won an Emmy award for her role as Fee Cleary in The Thorn Birds in 1983.

In 1994 she was honoured as a British Film Institute Fellow. A year later she starred in How To Make An American Quilt, alongside Winona Ryder.

Simmons now lives in Santa Monica, California.