Shirley Anne Field

Shirley Anne Field — Actress

Date of Birth: 1938

Date of Death: 10 December 2023

Biography

Shirley Anne and her brother (later a U.S homicide victim) were brought up in an orphanage after their mother was unable to care for them. She began her career modelling for 50s British pin up magazines such as Reveille and Titbits before entering films in 1955 as an extra and bit player, mostly used as glamorous set dressing.

Her first sizeable part was in Peeping Tom (1960) as a temperamental film star. The same year she also appeared in Beat Girl (1960) alongside Adam Faith, Peter McEnery & Oliver Reed, which was a film noted for containing the first score by composer John Barry.

She was then chosen by Laurence Olivier and director Tony Richardson for a featured role in The Entertainer (1960) which really made her name, followed by another British New Wave entry, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and Joseph Losey's cult classic The Damned (1962).

A trip to Hollywood for Kings of the Sun (1963) proved disappointing although she was considered for the role eventually played by Diane Baker in The Prize. Apart from Alfie (1966), her subsequent British films of this period were unworthy of her.

In the seventies she acted mostly in the theatre including an acclaimed performance in the South African production of Wait Until Dark. Shirley Anne returned to films in the highly successful My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and has subsequently had a prolific career in both films (Hear My Song) and television (Ken Russell's Lady Chatterley's Lover).

She worked in America during the early nineties including the feature Shag (1989) and a stint on the popular daytime soap "Santa Barbara" (1984). At the time of writing (2003) she was about to embark on the second half of a Nationwide UK tour in the American comedy, 'The Cemetery Club'. She has published a heart warming autobiography, A Time For Love.