Heather Sears
Heather Christine Sears ( born September 28, 1935 in London, † January 3, 1994 in Hinchley Wood, Surrey ) was a British actress.
Life
Training and first film roles
Heather Sears was born in 1935 in London's Whitechapel. Her two older sister Ann Sears (1933-1992) moved also to acting. In type, compared with Claire Bloom and Mary Ure young, Sears attended as a teenager, the Central School of Speech and Drama in her hometown. At the same time it was connected to the Paris circle of intellectuals by Pablo Picasso, Albert Camus and Arthur Koestler and counted there, the famous French actress Simone Signoret to their friends. Even before the end of their training they received on placement of film producer Jack Clayton, a friend and mentor, who during her entire film career over accompanied a film contract over seven years. This secured her six months a year on clearance for working in the theater and television. After drama school Sears was in 1955 at the Repertory Theatre in Windsor operates. A year later she celebrated her feature film debut with a small supporting role in Michael Truman's comedy The Other Half (1955 ), before the part as a naive Susan in Maurice Elveys comedy Dry Red ( 1956) followed.
Not even 22 years old gave Sears 1957 her debut on the London theater scene and took over from Mary Ure the part of Alison in John Osborne's Look Back in Anger with Alan Bates and Richard Pasco. The international breakthrough as a film actress her paved in the same year David Miller Esther Costello. In the film adaptation of a novel by Nicholas Monsarrat Sears can be seen in the title role of a girl from Ireland that has lost by a traumatic accident in childhood eyesight, hearing and speech. From a rich lady of American society (played by Joan Crawford ) adopted and raised, it is misused by managers shameless social charity, and serves as a showcase for their vile business. The melodrama was granted international success with critics who were differentiated mainly Sears Starring performance. The New York Times hailed the 1.60m great actress for her " inspiring, pleasing, lively face," while the trade publication Variety called it a " remarkable " film debut. A year later, Sears received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award and was awarded the Prize of the British Film Academy for Best British Actress.
Other work in theater and film
After this success, Sears took until the mid-1960s alternately true commitment to the theater and the movie. In London, she played at the Royal Court Theatre again with Alan Bates and Richard Pasco in Jean Giraudoux's L' Apollon de Bellac, appeared directed by John Dexter in Michael Hastings Yes and entered at the Lyric Hammersmith with Julien Green homoerotic piece The Stars of the South on. On the big screen she pandered as naive heiress in Jack Clayton's melodrama at the Top (1959 ) shared with Simone Signoret for the favor of Laurence Harvey. A year later, Clayton put them in his award-winning D. H. Lawrence adaptation Sons and Lovers (1960 ) as an intellectual darling of Dean Stockwell in scene. After the female lead role of Christine in the Hammer production The Riddle of the eerie mask ( 1962), a film adaptation of Gaston Leroux's popular gothic novel The Phantom of the Opera, to Sears moved gradually back from the film business.
Sears devoted himself mainly in the years to family life, interrupted by some work for television and two theater performances: the acclaimed turn as Grusche in Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the Theatre Festival of Chichester (1969 ) and a commitment to Alan Ayckbourns comedy The Better half in London's West end. Only in the 1970s, she appeared again reinforced in provincial repertory theater in appearance. Sears new workplace was the Haymarket Theatre in Leicester, where they both title roles in classic plays by Sophocles ( Antigone and Electra ), Shakespeare, Goldsmith, Dostoevsky, Ibsen ( Hedda Gabler ) and Strindberg (Miss Julie ), as well as more modern material from Brecht ( The Caucasian Chalk Circle ), Ayckbourn ( The better half), Rattigan and Pinter took over. Also, they went with the one-woman show Virginia Woolf in English-speaking countries on tour.
From 1958 until his death in 1991, Heather Sears with writer Tony Masters ( other sources say Production Designer ) was married. The marriage produced three joint sons were born. Sears died in 1994 after a long illness at the age of 58 years.