Siân Phillips

She was awarded the Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2016 Queen's New Years Honours List for her services to drama. She is an actress in London, England.

Made a Dame of The British Empire (DBE) in the Queen's 2015 /2016 New Year's Honours List.

Performing in "The Importance of Being Earnest", Trafalgar Studios, London 2014.

She has continued to work into the millennium with elderly parts on stage with "My Old Lady," "Calendar Girls," "Crossing Borders" (a cabaret show), "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," "The Importance of Being Earnest," "Playing for Time" and "Les Blancs," while in films she appeared in The Gigolos (2006), Love Song (2012), Miss Dali (2018), Be Happy! (2019), Dream Horse (2020) and was the narrator and grandmother in a rather radical retelling, animated version of A Christmas Carol (2020).

She was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2000 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to drama.

Driver) and Aristocrats (1999).

She was nominated for a 1998 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Musical of 1997 season for her performance in "Marlene".

Her participation in such productions as "Pal Joey" (her musical debut), "Gigi" and "A Little Night Music" ultimately led to her acclaimed one-woman cabaret show "Marlene", a tribute to legendary Marlene Dietrich, which opened to rave reviews in London in 1997. Two years later, she won a Tony Award nomination for this role on Broadway.

She quickly remarried a much younger actor, Britisher Robin Sachs, but they too would divorce in 1991. Despite her personal turmoil, she continued to delve into her stage work, beginning a new phase of her career in musicals.

Grenvilles (1987) (as the Duchess of Windsor), A Killing on the Exchange (1987), The Snow Spider (1988), The Chestnut Soldier (1991), The Borrowers (1992) and it's sequel The Return of the Borrowers (1993) (as Mrs.

Nominated for 'Best Actress in a Musical' in the 1980 Laurence Olivier Awards for her performance in 'Pal Joey' but lost out to Gemma Craven.

Over the years, Siân has distinguished herself regularly in such quality TV mini-series as Oresteia (1979), Crime and Punishment (1979), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979), Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981) (as Clementine Churchill), Smiley's People (1982) (as Lady Smiley), The Two Mrs.

Welsh-born stage veteran Siân Phillips is forever identified on television as the tarantula mother/empress Livia in the classic BBC series I, Claudius (1976) (for which she won a BAFTA-TV award), and as the Reverend Mother in the science fiction epic film Dune (1984). Her broad range of roles went from endearing to downright deadly.

She played Mrs. Patrick Campbell in Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill (1974) and Lady Clementine Churchill in Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981). The former's second husband George Cornwallis-West had previously been married to Winston Churchill's mother Lady Randolph Churchill whereas the latter was Churchill's wife.

Chips (1969) (which earned her a National Society of Film Critics award and a Golden Globe nomination for "Supporting Actress"), Murphy's War (1971) and Under Milk Wood (1971). They had two daughters, actresses Kate O'Toole and Pat O'Toole. While her resonant voice served her well as an announcer, newsreader and narrator at different stages of her career, her severely chiseled looks and arch, regal bearing entitled her to perform some of the more notable classics, with critically-acclaimed turns in "Saint Joan", "The Taming of the Shrew" and "The Duchess of Malfi," being just a few.

Siân's occasional patricians have also graced such well-mounted films as Young Cassidy (1965), Nijinsky (1980) and The Age of Innocence (1993). After 20 years of marriage, Siân divorced O'Toole, known for his carousing and hard-living ways.

Appeared in four films with husband Peter O'Toole: Becket (1964), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), Murphy's War (1971) and Under Milk Wood (1971). Played the mother of her real-life daughter Kate O'Toole in Laughter in the Dark (1969), their only joint venture.

After a brief marriage, she met and married actor Peter O'Toole in 1959 and appeared frequently with him on stage, including "Ride a Cock Horse" (1965) and "Man and Superman" (1965), and in the movies Becket (1964), Goodbye, Mr.

Siân attended the University of Wales and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, making her London debut in the title role of "Hedda Gabler" in 1957.

She was born Jane Elizabeth Ailwên Phillips on May 14, 1933, in Wales, to Sally (Thomas), a teacher, and David Phillips, a steelworker and policeman. Brought brought up bilingual in both English and Welsh, she performed on the Welsh radio station at age 11. She toured extensively for the Arts Council in Wales in original Welsh plays and in translations from the English classics before becoming an award-winning television actress in her late teens.