Cathleen Nesbitt

Cathleen Nesbitt, born Kathleen Mary Nesbitt on 24 November 1888 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, was an English actress of Welsh and Irish descent whose stage career spanned seven decades, from her Broadway debut in 1911 through a revival appearance in 1981. The daughter of Thomas and Mary Catherine Nesbitt, she received her education in Lisieux, France, and at the Queen's University of Belfast and the Sorbonne. Her younger brother, Thomas Nesbitt, Jr., appeared in one film in 1925 before dying in South Africa in 1927 from an apparent heart attack.

Nesbitt launched her professional career with a London stage debut in a revival of Arthur Wing Pinero's The Cabinet Minister in 1910. The following year she joined the Irish Players and traveled to the United States, making her Broadway debut in The Well of the Saints. She was also among the cast of John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World during that same tour, a production during which the entire company was pelted with fruits and vegetables by offended Irish American Catholic audience members. She returned to Broadway in Quinneys in 1915 and in John Galsworthy's Justice in 1916, the latter opposite John Barrymore in his first dramatic stage role, in which Nesbitt served as his leading lady. After five additional Broadway productions, she returned to England, where her roles during that period included the title role in a revival of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. Her Broadway credits also included Diversion, The Saving Grace, The Very Minute, and Uncle Vanya, among other productions.

In 1949, Nesbitt appeared in the August premiere of T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party, a production that also became one of her noted Broadway credits. In 1951, she played Aunt Alicia in the original Broadway production of Gigi, adapted by Anita Loos, followed by Sabrina Fair in 1953 and Anastasia in 1954. Her most prominent Broadway association came in 1956, when she originated the role of Mrs. Higgins in the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical My Fair Lady, starring Rex Harrison. Twenty-five years later, in 1981 and in her nineties, Nesbitt reprised the role in a Broadway revival of the production, again opposite Harrison, who was then in his seventies.

Nesbitt's film career began with the silent picture A Star Over Night in 1919, followed by The Faithful Heart in 1922. She did not return to film until 1930, when she appeared as Anne Lymes in the early talkie Canaries Sometimes Sing, and then in The Frightened Lady in 1932. She appeared in the 1938 film adaptation of Pygmalion as a guest at the Embassy ball. In 1945 she portrayed Lady Macbeth in the sixteen-minute short Famous Scenes From Shakespeare No 2: Macbeth. Her first Hollywood studio film was Three Coins in the Fountain in 1954, in which she played La Principessa, followed that same year by Black Widow, in which she played Lucia Colletti. She appeared as Cary Grant's grandmother Janou in An Affair to Remember in 1957, despite being only sixteen years older than Grant, and was part of the ensemble cast of Separate Tables in 1958. Additional film appearances included The Parent Trap in 1961, Promise Her Anything in 1965, Staircase in 1969 opposite Richard Burton, Villain in 1971, French Connection II in 1975 alongside Gene Hackman, Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot in 1976, Julia in 1977, and Never Never Land in 1980.

On television, Nesbitt was a series regular on The Farmer's Daughter from 1963 to 1966, portraying Agatha Morley, the mother of a congressman played by William Windom. She also guest starred on The United States Steel Hour, Wagon Train, Naked City, Dr. Kildare, and Upstairs, Downstairs, in which she played Mabel, Countess of Southwold, the mother of Rachel Gurney's character.

In her personal life, Nesbitt became the romantic partner of English poet Rupert Brooke in 1912, and the two became engaged to be married. Brooke died in 1915 at age twenty-seven from blood poisoning caused by an infected mosquito bite while serving in the Royal Navy during World War I. Nesbitt lived for many years in the United States before returning to the United Kingdom, where she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1978. Her autobiography, A Little Love and Good Company, was published in 1973. She died of natural causes in London on 2 August 1982 at the age of ninety-three.