Barbara Jefford

Barbara Mary Jefford, OBE (26 July 1930 – 12 September 2020) was a British actress born in Plymstock, Devon, the daughter of Elizabeth Mary Ellen (née Laity) and Percival Francis Jefford. She was raised primarily in Somerset and attended Weirfield School in Taunton. Her formal training began at the Hartly-Hodder School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art, after which she enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where she received the Bancroft Gold Medal. While still a student in 1946, she took small parts in the radio production of Westward Ho! and other radio broadcasts. Her stage debut came in 1949, when she played Viola in Twelfth Night at the Dolphin Theatre in Brighton.

Following a single year in repertory theatre, Jefford was cast as Isabella in Peter Brook's 1950 production of Measure for Measure at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, appearing opposite John Gielgud as Angelo and Harry Andrews as Vincentio. Over the next four years at Stratford she took on a wide range of Shakespearean roles, including Anne Boleyn in Henry VIII, Calpurnia in Julius Caesar opposite Anthony Quayle and Michael Langham, and Hero opposite Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft, all in 1950. In 1951 she played Lady Percy in Henry IV opposite Anthony Quayle and Michael Redgrave, and Isabel opposite Richard Burton in Henry V. She appeared as Desdemona to Quayle's Othello in 1952, and in 1953 toured New Zealand as Rosalind in As You Like It and Lady Percy in Henry IV, Part 1. Her Stratford work continued in 1954 with Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Kate to Keith Michell's Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, and Helen in Troilus and Cressida.

Jefford subsequently co-starred with Michael Redgrave in Tiger at the Gates in the West End and on Broadway, one of several Broadway appearances she made between 1955 and 1962. Her Broadway credits also included Saint Joan, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night. After her Broadway work she returned to the Old Vic, where her roles encompassed Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Imogen in Cymbeline, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Tamora in Titus Andronicus, Lady Anne in Richard III, Viola in Twelfth Night, Queen Margaret in Henry VI Parts 1–3, Isabella in Measure for Measure, Regan in King Lear, and Rosalind in As You Like It, among others. In 1978 she played Gertrude opposite Derek Jacobi's Hamlet. Many of these Old Vic productions toured the United States, the USSR, the Middle East, and Europe.

Her association with Frank Hauser's Oxford Playhouse brought her first of three Cleopatra performances, as well as roles in Racine's Phèdre and as Lina in Misalliance, the latter transferring to the Criterion Theatre. In 1976 she appeared in the opening production at the Olivier Theatre, playing Zabina in Tamburlaine the Great alongside Albert Finney. In the early 1970s she played Katherine Stockman in Ibsen's An Enemy of the People at the Chichester Theatre Festival. She was nominated for an Olivier Award in 1991 for playing Volumnia in Coriolanus at the Barbican, and later reprised the role opposite Ralph Fiennes in London, New York City, and Tokyo. Her final Shakespearean production was Michael Grandage's Richard III with Kenneth Branagh at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield in 2002, in which she played Queen Margaret. In July 2007 she played Mrs Higgins in Peter Hall's Theatre Royal, Bath production of Pygmalion, which transferred to the Old Vic in May 2008. Over her career she appeared in 54 productions covering all but four of Shakespeare's plays.

On screen, Jefford's first major film role was as Molly Bloom in the 1967 adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses, for which she received a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress. The following year she appeared in A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Bofors Gun, and The Shoes of the Fisherman, all in 1968, and in Lust for a Vampire in 1971. She played Magda Goebbels in Hitler: The Last Ten Days in 1973. Later film work included Fellini's And the Ship Sails On and Nelly's Version, both in 1983, Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate in 1999, Terence Davies's The Deep Blue Sea, and Stephen Frears's Philomena in 2013, in which she played Sister Hildegard alongside Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. For the James Bond film From Russia with Love in 1963 she provided the uncredited voice of Tatiana Romanova, and she later dubbed Molly Peters in Thunderball and Caroline Munro in The Spy Who Loved Me. In 1959 she appeared as Ophelia in a television production of Hamlet. Her television credits also included Edna, the Inebriate Woman in the Play For Today series in 1971, Porterhouse Blue in 1987, Where Angels Fear to Tread in 1991, and multiple episodes of Midsomer Murders in 2000 and 2009.

Jefford's extensive radio work for the BBC included Isabella in Measure for Measure on the Home Service in 1950, Goneril in King Lear on the Third Programme in 1967 alongside John Gielgud, Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra on Radio 4 in 1981, Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter on Radio 4 in 1981, Queen Elizabeth I in Mary Stuart on Radio 4 in 1987, and Maria Lvovna Dzerzinskaya in The Stalin Sonata on Radio 4 in 1989, the last of which won a Giles Cooper Award.