Hazel Terry

Hazel M. Neilson-Terry (23 January 1918 – 12 October 1974) was an English actress born in London and a member of the Terry theatrical dynasty. Her father was actor Dennis Neilson-Terry and her mother was actress Mary Glynne. Her only sibling was her sister Monica Julia Glassborow, née Neilson-Terry, who died in 1984.

Terry's stage career began at the age of 17 in 1936, when she played the page in Henry IV, Part I at His Majesty's Theatre, a production featuring George Robey as Falstaff. Later that same year she appeared as Beauty in Everyman. Following the path her cousin John Gielgud had taken earlier in his own career, she joined the Oxford Repertory Company, where her roles included Olivia in Twelfth Night. In 1938 she appeared in The Last Trump during the Malvern Festival season, a production that subsequently transferred to the West End.

That same year, Terry made her New York debut on Broadway in J. B. Priestley's Time and the Conways, playing the role of Hazel. She later repeated the role on a British tour. Back in England, she undertook a year-long ENSA tour playing Amanda in Noël Coward's Private Lives. In 1944 she understudied Peggy Ashcroft as Ophelia in Gielgud's final London production of Hamlet, and went on to perform the role herself in Manchester and London.

Her postwar stage work included Lydia in Coward's Peace in Our Time in 1947, the Queen in Terence Rattigan's Adventure Story in 1949, and Mesita in The Seagull, also in 1949. After a period of reduced theatrical activity during much of the 1950s, she returned to the stage as the housekeeper in Enid Bagnold's The Last Joke at the Phoenix Theatre in September 1960, a production whose cast included both John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson. In 1961 she played Rachel in The Irregular Verb To Love in the West End.

Terry's film career began in 1935 with The Marriage of Corbal. Her subsequent screen credits included Our Fighting Navy (1937), Missing, Believed Married (1937), Sweet Devil (1938), Kill or Cure (1962), and The Servant (1963).

In her personal life, Terry was married twice, first to actor Geoffrey Keen and then to David Evans. Her daughter, Jemma Hyde (1941–2017), also became an actress. Terry died on 12 October 1974 at the age of 56. An inquest established that she had taken a large dose of valium and had been an alcoholic for many years.