Joan Plowright, the British actress who brought an innate dignity to her characters, whether she was playing an elegant, name-dropping dowager or a working-class teenager, died on Thursday in Northwood, England. She was 95.

Her death was confirmed by her daughter Julie-Kate Olivier, who said she died surrounded by her family at Denville Hall, a care home for people who have worked in the theatrical industry.

Although she will always be associated with her 28-year marriage to Laurence Olivier, one of Britain’s most revered actors, Plowright had more than her share of shining moments.

She won a Tony Award for A Taste of Honey (1960), playing a teenage girl who becomes pregnant from a casual fling with a sailor (played by Billy Dee Williams). Three decades later, she earned an Oscar nomination for Enchanted April (1991), in which she played an upper-class 1920s Englishwoman who knew all the best Victorians. (When she was a child, her character recalls, a poet who used to visit always pulled her pigtails; naturally, it was Alfred, Lord Tennyson.)

In 1993, Plowright had a two-trophy night at the Golden Globe Awards, winning two best featured actress awards — for Enchanted April and for her portrayal of Josef Stalin’s disapproving mother-in-law in the 1992 HBO movie Stalin.

“Larry would have been so thrilled by all the fuss the Americans are making of me,” she told The Daily Mail.

New York Times News Service