Constance Collier

Constance Collier, born Laura Constance Hardie on 22 January 1878 in Windsor, Berkshire, was an English stage and film actress, acting coach, and book writer whose career spanned from the late nineteenth century through the early 1950s. The daughter of Auguste Cheetham Hardie and Eliza Georgina Collier, she made her first stage appearance at the age of three, performing as Fairy Peasblossom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. By 1893, at fifteen, she had joined the Gaiety Girls, the dance troupe resident at London's Gaiety Theatre. She died on 25 April 1955 in Manhattan of a heart attack at the age of seventy-seven.

Collier's early theatrical career brought her into close association with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. On 27 December 1906, she played Cleopatra opposite Tree's Mark Antony in his revival of Antony and Cleopatra at His Majesty's Theatre, a production distinguished by elaborate costumes designed by Percy Macquoid. In January 1908, she again appeared with Tree at His Majesty's Theatre in J. Comyns Carr's The Mystery of Edwin Drood, based on the unfinished Charles Dickens novel. That same year she made the first of several tours to the United States, marking the beginning of her Broadway career, which extended from 1908 to 1942. A second American tour with Tree in 1916 led to her work in silent films, including an uncredited appearance in D. W. Griffith's Intolerance and a role as Lady Macbeth in Tree's film adaptation of Macbeth.

In 1905, Collier married English actor Julian Boyle, who performed under the stage name Julian L'Estrange. The marriage produced no children, and L'Estrange died of influenza in New York in 1918, after which Collier returned to England.

In the early 1920s, Collier formed a close working and personal friendship with actor Ivor Novello. The two appeared together in the 1922 silent film The Bohemian Girl alongside Gladys Cooper and Ellen Terry, and they collaborated on written works under the shared pen name James Lestrange. Around this same period, Collier became seriously ill with diabetes. She was sent to Switzerland for treatment in 1923 and subsequently to a doctor in Strasbourg, where she became the first patient in Europe to be treated with insulin, following the drug's recent discovery by Frederick Banting and others in Toronto. After her recovery, she appeared on Broadway in Somerset Maugham's comedy Our Betters and collaborated with Novello on the play The Rat, both of which are among her verified Broadway credits. She also appeared on Broadway in Serena Blandish and starred in Thais, among other productions.

Collier's work as a writer extended to opera. She collaborated with Deems Taylor on the libretto for Peter Ibbetson, which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in February 1931 to mixed reviews. In 1924, she introduced Novello to the poet Siegfried Sassoon, with whom she had a six-month affair; according to Sassoon's biographer Jean Moorcroft Wilson, the relationship caused him considerable distress.

In the late 1920s, Collier relocated to Hollywood, where she worked as a voice coach and diction teacher during the transition from silent to sound film. Among her most noted pupils during this period was Colleen Moore, whose lessons with Collier were documented in an interview by film historian Kevin Brownlow for the 1980 television series Hollywood. In 1935, Luise Rainer engaged Collier upon arriving in Hollywood to improve her theatre acting, her English, and her understanding of film acting. Collier also coached Audrey Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, Marilyn Monroe, and Katharine Hepburn, the last of whom she accompanied during a world tour performing Shakespeare in the 1950s. She was presented with the American Shakespeare Festival Theatre Award for distinguished service in training and guiding actors in Shakespearean roles.

Despite her Hollywood commitments, Collier maintained an active Broadway presence through the 1930s. In 1932 she originated the role of Carlotta Vance in the George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber comedy Dinner at Eight, a part later played by Marie Dressler in the 1933 film version. Her film work included Stage Door in 1937, during the making of which she began a lasting friendship with Katharine Hepburn, as well as Mitchell Leisen's Kitty in 1945, Perils of Pauline with Betty Hutton, Alfred Hitchcock's Rope in 1948, and Otto Preminger's Whirlpool in 1949. Collier has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Upon her death, Hepburn took on Collier's secretary, Phyllis Wilbourn, who remained in Hepburn's employ for forty years.