nPARA fPAR@ ` 6TEXT ` (Tandy, Jessica1909╨1994actorBorn in London, England, on June 7, 1909, Jessica lost her father to cancer when she was twelve years old. Her mother maintained several jobs to support her three children. As a teenager, Jessica set her sights on acting, an art her mother encouraged. She studied at Dame Alice Owen╒s Girls╒ School from 1919 to 1924, after which she began a three-year training program at London╒s Ben Greet Academy of Acting. Her professional debut╤for which she had to make her own elaborate costumes╤took place at age 18 in a small London theater presentation of The Manderson Girls. Though she went on to appear in several contemporary works, she prized classical theater above all. She focused on Shakespeare early, portraying Olivia in a 1930 Oxford University presentation of Twelfth Night and later appeared in the same work again as Viola. She married and bore a child before returning to the stage as Ophelia in John Gielgud╒s Hamlet, 1934.After emigrating to the U.S. in 1940 and ending her first marriage, she and actor-director Hume Cronyn were married in 1942 and had two children. In Hollywood her career languished, as she was too often typecast as an English maid. In 1946, however, Cronyn directed Tandy in Tennessee Williams╒s one-act play, Portrait of a Madonna, and she caught the playwright╒s attention. Williams cast her a year later as Blanche DuBois opposite Marlon Brando in his Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire. She won a Tony award for that performance, and the play, which ran on Broadway for two years, won both a Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics╒ Circle Award.She returned to Elizabethan drama in 1961 in the role of Lady Macbeth at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut. Before playing Queen Gertrude in Hamlet, 1963, she appeared on the screen in Hitchcock╒s The Birds, 1963. She played both Hippolyta and Titania in A Midsummer Night╒s Dream at the 1976 Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada, and Mary Tyrone in O╒Neill╒s Long Day╒s Journey into Night at the Theatre London in Ontario, in 1977. In 1978 she earned her second Tony award, this time for her performance in The Gin Game, playing opposite her husband. Both she and Cronyn were admitted to the Theater Hall of Fame in 1979.In 1983 Tandy performed in Foxfire, for which she received a third Tony award; she later received an Emmy award for a television adaptation. Tandy earned further critical acclaim for her role in a 1983 revival of Williams╒s The Glass Menagerie. On screen she triumphed as the feminist Miss Birdseye in the film adaptation of Henry James╒s The Bostonians, 1984.She earned both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe award for her performance in Driving Miss Daisy, 1989; at age 80, she was the oldest person to win an Oscar. She continued to appear to great acclaim in films such as Fried Green Tomatoes, 1991, and Used People, 1992; two more films, Camilla and Nobody╒s Fool, had not yet been released when she died. Nevertheless she always claimed the stage as her first love.Remarkable as her acting career on her own was, some of her best work was the fruit of her collaboration with Hume Cronyn in such films as Cocoon, 1985, and in stage productions such as The Gin Game and Foxfire. Reviewing Foxfire, New York Times critic Frank Rich captured the essence of Tandy╒s appeal: ╥Everything this actress does is so pure and right that only poets, not theater critics, should be allowed to write about her.╙She received many honors, including honorary degrees from the University of Western Ontario, 1974, and Fordham University, 1985. In 1986 she received the Kennedy Center Honors for her contributions to the arts. She continued to work for years after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1990. She died September 11, 1994, at her home in Easton, Connecticut. styl ` @ ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ !I L !I _ !I c 5¬ d !I ) !I 6 !I ─ !I ╩ !I ╥ 5¬ ╙ !I !I ! !I ╡ !I ═ !I m 5¬ n !I !I !I N !I W !I ë !I ó !I ≤ !I !I ê !I ö !I ⁿ 5¬ ² !I !I !I ▐ !I ± !I
