Jessica Tandy

Who was Jessica Tandy?

Jessica Alice Tandy was a British-American stage and film actress, who spent most of her 67-year career in the United States. She appeared in over 100 stage productions and had more than 60 roles in film and TV.

Born in London to a headmistress and a travelling salesman, she made her professional debut on the London stage in 1927, at the age of 18. During the 1930s, she appeared in a large number of plays in London's West End, playing roles such as Ophelia, opposite John Gielgud's legendary Hamlet, and Katherine, opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V. In the 1930s, she also worked in a couple of British films. Following the end of her marriage to the British actor Jack Hawkins, she moved to New York in 1940, where she met Canadian actor Hume Cronyn. He became her second husband and frequent partner on stage and screen.

She won the Tony Award for her performance as Blanche Dubois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948, sharing the prize with Katharine Cornell and Judith Anderson. Over the following three decades, her career continued sporadically and included a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's horror film, The Birds, and a Tony Award-winning performance in The Gin Game. Along with Cronyn, she was a member of the original acting company of the Guthrie Theater.