Rachel Roberts

Rachel Roberts (20 September 1927 – 26 November 1980) was a Welsh actress born in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire. Raised in a Baptist household, she later studied at the University of Wales and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before beginning her professional career with a repertory company in Swansea in 1950. Her film debut came in the Welsh-set comedy Valley of Song (1953), directed by Gilbert Gunn.

Roberts rose to international prominence through two landmark British New Wave films. Karel Reisz cast her as Brenda in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), and Lindsay Anderson cast her as Mrs Hammond in This Sporting Life (1963). Both performances earned her the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress, and her work in This Sporting Life brought an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Her theatre work during this period included the original 1964 production of Lionel Bart's musical Maggie May, in which she played the title role at the Royal Court.

Her film career continued through the 1960s and into the 1970s, encompassing Anderson's O Lucky Man! (1973), the Agatha Christie adaptation Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), in which she portrayed the authoritarian headmistress of a Victorian girls' school. After relocating to Los Angeles in the early 1970s, she appeared in American productions including Foul Play (1978). Her final British film, Yanks (1979), directed by John Schlesinger, earned her a BAFTA for Supporting Actress.

Roberts appeared on Broadway between 1973 and 1979, with credits including Chemin de Fer, The Visit, Habeas Corpus, and Once a Catholic. Her Broadway work brought significant recognition: she received a 1974 Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play for Chemin de Fer and The Visit, and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play in 1976 for her performance in Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus.

Roberts was married twice. She first married actor Alan Dobie in 1955; they divorced in 1960. The following year she married actor Rex Harrison in Genoa, Italy. The marriage ended in divorce in 1971. In 1979, she co-starred with Jill Bennett in the London Weekend Television production of Alan Bennett's The Old Crowd, directed by Lindsay Anderson and Stephen Frears.

Roberts died on 26 November 1980 at her home in Los Angeles at the age of 53. Her gardener discovered her body on the kitchen floor surrounded by broken glass. An autopsy determined that her death resulted from swallowing a caustic substance, along with barbiturates and alcohol, and the coroner ruled her death a suicide. Her posthumously published journals formed the basis of No Bells on Sunday: The Memoirs of Rachel Roberts, published in 1984. She was cremated at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles. In 1992, her ashes, together with those of Jill Bennett, were scattered on the River Thames by director Lindsay Anderson during a boat trip attended by colleagues and friends, an event documented in Anderson's BBC film Is That All There Is?