Born January 31, 1929 in London, her father was a British Olympic gymnastics champion. Discovered in dancing school at the age of 14, she was promptly signed for a co-starring role in her first film, 1944’s Give Us the Moon. It was her seventh film in three years, David Lean’s 1946 production of Great Expectations, as the headstrong young Estella, that made her a star. She was only sixteen when she played the nymph in the following year’s Black Narcissus under the direction of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and seventeen when she played Ophelia to Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet. That film, which won the 1948 Oscar for Best Picture and a Best Actor award for Olivier, earned Simmons her first Oscar nomination as well.

Several British films followed, most notably 1950’s So Long at the Fair, a gothic mystery opposite Dirk Bogarde that made her the number four box office star in Great Britain. Ignoring Olivier’s advice to further hone her craft on stage, she followed future husband Stewart Granger to Hollywood, where she was promptly put under contract by Howard Hughes. She did not like any of the films Hughes put her in at RKO, including Otto Preminger’s Angel Face, the 1952 film in which she plays a cold-blooded killer, which is now recognized as a noir masterpiece.

Refusing to allow her to play the lead in 1953’s Roman Holiday for William Wyler at Paramount, after making one more film for Hughes, she was free. The experience so numbed her that she refused to sign another long term contract for the remainder of her life.

Despite the loss of Roman Holiday, 1953 proved to be a wonderful year for her as she starred in three of her best films, Young Bess as the future Elizabeth I; the box-office smash, The Robe opposite Richard Burton; and George Cukor’s The Actress as the young Ruth Gordon with Spencer Tracy and Teresa Wright as her parents.

Neither she nor Marlon Brando were trained singers, but their warbling in rehearsals for 1955’s Guys and Dolls so impressed producer Sam Goldwyn that he decided not to have them dubbed. The pleasant result won her a Golden Globe for Best Actress – Musical or Comedy.

The outspoken actress made no bones about her displeasure at director William Wyler’s multiple takes on 1958’s The Big Country and the more than a year it took to film 1960’s Spartacus, directed by Stanley Kubrick, albeit controlled by star and producer Kirk Douglas.

She had a much more pleasant experience as the good evangelist brought low by Burt Lancaster’s conniving one in that same year’s Elmer Gantry. Lancaster and Shirley Jones won Oscars, while Simmons, whose performance is every bit as good, wasn’t even nominated. She did, however, marry the director, Richard Brooks, just three months after her divorce from Granger.

She gave another acclaimed performance as the suddenly widowed young mother, pregnant with a second child, in Alex Segal’s 1963 version of James Agee’s All the Way Home. The film would easily have gotten her a second Oscar nomination in what was one of the weakest years for leading actresses ever, except that the film did such poor business that it was yanked from its L.A. run after six days. Oscar rules stipulate that a film must be shown for seven consecutive days in order to qualify for Oscar consideration.

She finally did get that elusive second nomination for 1969’s The Happy Ending, a curious film about an alcoholic, directed by her husband, who claimed he was trying to get her to see herself in her character. He allegedly divorced her eight years later because of her drinking, but she did not seek professional help for the problem until the late 1980s.

Mostly in forgettable TV roles in the 1970s, she did have a major success on the London stage and on tour in the U.S. with Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music.

Her best late-career role was as Rachel Ward’s mother in the 1983 TV miniseries, The Thorn Birds, for which she won a much deserved Emmy.

In 1989, the year that Angela Lansbury received the fifth of twelve unsuccessful Emmy nominations for Murder, She Wrote, Simmons became the first and only guest star to also receive a nomination for the long-running series. She played an old friend of Jessica’s (Lansbury) who may or may not have been a murderess.

She turned down the lead in the British TV series, As Time Goes By in 1992, thus handing Judi Dench the role that would make her a major star.

In mostly minor roles since, she briefly returned to England for her final film, 2009’s Shadows in the Sun, in which she has the lead as a lonely old woman dying of cancer. She quit smoking during the filming, but it was too late. Jean Simmons died of lung cancer on January 22, 2010, nine days before what would have been her 81st birthday.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

SO LONG AT THE FAIR (1950), directed by Terence Fisher, Anthony Darnborough

This is a meticulously crafted thriller about a young English girl whose brother disappears while attending the Paris Expedition of 1896. The next day, not only is her brother missing, but the room in which he slept has also completely disappeared. What’s going on? Well, Simmons’ burgeoning career, for one thing. Already a star, she proved with this film that she could carry a film on her own, although she does get memorable support from Dirk Bogarde, David Tomlinson and Cathleen Nesbitt among others.

YOUNG BESS (1953), directed by George Sidney

Actresses from Flora Robson and Bette Davis to Glenda Jackson and Helen Mirren have memorably played England’s Elizabeth I, but Simmons remains the only one to successfully play her as a young woman before she wore the crown. Although she’s ably supported by a gallery of fine actors including Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr and Charles Laughton reprising his Oscar winning role from twenty years earlier, it’s Simmons who stands out. Also in the cast are Kay Walsh, Kathleen Byron, Robert Arthur and Rex Thompson as the future King Edward.

ELMER GANTRY (1960), directed by Richard Brooks

Generally considered her best performance, Simmons’ Sharon Falconer, a true believer in her evangelical work, is the most tragic of Simmons’ gallery of screen portrayals. Led on by phony fellow evangelist Gantry, played by Burt Lancaster, Simmons walks a fine line between piety and lust, paying for one or the other, I’m not sure which, with her life. It’s a finely nuanced performance that many of her contemporaries would have been unwilling or unable to play, or both.

ALL THE WAY HOME (1963), directed by Alex Segal

In the rural South at the beginning of the last century, breadwinner Robert Preston is suddenly taken from pregnant wife Simmons and son Michael Kearney in a tragic auto accident. With the help of her maiden aunt, beautifully played by Aline MacMahon, Simmons slowly but surely learns to do what she needs to in order to raise her son and unborn second child. It’s another emotionally compelling performance by Simmons that should be better known than it is.

THE THORN BIRDS (1983), directed by Daryl Duke

Barbara Stanwyck, Richard Kiley and Jean Simmons won richly deserved Emmys for their performances, while Richard Chamberlain and several other cast members were nominated for this acclaimed TV miniseries which spans sixty years in the life of its characters. It garnered six wins out of its total of sixteen Emmy nominations overall.

Stanwyck as the wealthy 75-year-old Australian land owner who tries to seduce priest Chamberlain received the bulk of the praise with her heartbreaking performance, but Simmons, in her quiet way, stole every scene she was in as the mother of the girl (Rachel Ward) who later has an affair with the priest.

JEAN SIMMONS’ OSCAR AND EMMY NOMINATIONS

• Hamlet (1948) – Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress
• The Happy Ending (1969) – Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress
• The Thorn Birds (1983) – Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Special
• Murder, She Wrote (1989) – Emmy nomination for Oustanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series