Australians in Hollywood : Biographical Notes

Dame Judith Anderson
As Mrs Danvers in Hitchcock’s Rebecca, Dame Judith Anderson (1898-1992) was nominated for a supporting actress Oscar, becoming Australia ’s second-ever Oscar nominee. She had sailed for New York at the age of 20, having forged a strong reputation in Australian theatre. After initial rejections – “I wish I had a beautiful face,” she would later say; “an ugly woman has to work doubly hard” – she broke into Broadway theatre in 1924. In a long stage career she would play Gertrude to John Gielgud’s Hamlet on Broadway and Lady Macbeth opposite Laurence Olivier in London . Her first film was Blood Money (1933). She was a slave in The Ten Commandments (1956), Big Mama in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Jerry Lewis’s evil stepmother in Cinderfella (1960), a Vulcan High Priestess in Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock (1984). She was also in A Man Called Horse (1970) and TV’s Santa Barbara (1984-1987).

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