Siân Phillips

Siân Phillips, born Jane Elizabeth Ailwên Phillips on 14 May 1933 in Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen, Glamorgan, South Wales, is a Welsh actress whose Broadway appearances spanned from 1994 to 2008. The daughter of Sally Phillips, a teacher, and David Phillips, a steelworker who later became a policeman, she grew up speaking Welsh as her primary language, acquiring English largely through radio. She attended Pontardawe Grammar School, where a Welsh teacher began calling her Siân, the Welsh equivalent of Jane, the name by which she became professionally known. She subsequently read English and Philosophy at University College Cardiff, graduating from the University of Wales in 1955 before entering RADA on a scholarship that same September, alongside fellow students Diana Rigg and Glenda Jackson.

Phillips began her performing career at the age of eleven, working with the BBC Home Service in Wales and winning her first speech-and-drama award at the National Eisteddfod at Llandybïe in 1944. She made her first British television appearance at seventeen and received a Welsh acting award at eighteen. Between 1953 and 1955 she was a member of both the BBC Repertory Company and the National Theatre Company, touring Wales in Welsh and English productions for the Welsh Arts Council. During her student years at University College Cardiff she also worked as a newsreader and announcer for BBC Wales.

Her London stage career began in 1957 with a production of Hermann Sudermann's Magda for RADA, a role she was the first performer since Sarah Bernhardt to take on. That same year she performed the title role in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, which opened at the Duke of York's Theatre on 3 December 1957 and subsequently played at Det Nye Teatret in Oslo. At RADA she had won the Bancroft Gold Medal for that role. In May 1958 she played Joan in Shaw's Saint Joan at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, and in 1958 she appeared as Masha in Three Sisters at the Nottingham Playhouse. Her Royal Shakespeare Company credits include Julia in The Duchess of Malfi, which opened at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford on 30 November 1960 and transferred to the Aldwych Theatre on 15 December 1960, as well as Bertha in Ondine at the Aldwych on 12 January 1961, and Miss Havisham in Great Expectations at the RSC in Stratford in December 2005.

Phillips's National Theatre work includes Lady Britomart in Major Barbara at the Lyttelton Theatre, opening 18 October 1982; Madam Armfeldt in A Little Night Music at the Olivier Theatre, opening 18 September 1995; Hope in In Bed With Magritte, opening 1 December 1995; and Madame Neilsen in Les Blancs at the Olivier Theatre in 2016. Her West End credits also encompass Pal Joey, Gigi, A Little Night Music, and Marlene, in which she portrayed Marlene Dietrich.

On Broadway, Phillips starred in Marlene, for which she received both a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical and a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Musical, both in 1999. She also appeared on Broadway in Les Liaisons Dangereuses and An Inspector Calls. Her Broadway career extended from 1994 to 2008, and she additionally performed in Marlene on the American stage more broadly.

Her screen career gained significant momentum in the 1960s. She appeared opposite her then-husband Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton in Becket in 1964, played Ursula Mossbank in the musical film Goodbye, Mr. Chips in 1969 alongside O'Toole, and appeared with O'Toole again in Murphy's War in 1971. She portrayed Emmeline Pankhurst in the television miniseries Shoulder to Shoulder in 1974 and Beth Morgan in the television series How Green Was My Valley in 1975. Her most celebrated screen performance came in 1976 when she played Livia in the BBC adaptation of Robert Graves's I, Claudius, a role for which she won the 1977 BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress and a Royal Television Society award. Further television work includes Clementine Churchill in Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years in 1981, Lady Ann in the BBC espionage dramas Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in 1979 and Smiley's People in 1982, both adapted from John le Carré's novels and starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley. She played the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam in David Lynch's Dune in 1984, Queen Cassiopeia in Clash of the Titans in 1981, and Adrian in seasons two and four of the Canadian series La Femme Nikita in 1998 and 2000. In 2024 she portrayed Enid Meadows in the Doctor Who episode "73 Yards."

Phillips provided spoken-word backing on a track from Rufus Wainwright's 2007 album Release the Stars and appeared live with him at the Old Vic Theatre in London that same year. She holds the title of Dame and is known professionally by the Welsh pronunciation of her first name.