Peggy Ashcroft (1907–1991)

Edith Margaret "Peggy" Ashcroft was born in the south London suburb of Croydon to a middle-class family. Her father was killed in World War I when she was 10 years old. Her teachers at school encouraged her love of Shakespeare, but neither they nor her mother approved of her ambition to become a professional actress. However, she was determined, and at age 16, she enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
While still a student, she made her professional stage debut with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in a J. M. Barrie play, Dear Brutus. She spent the first 40 years of her career almost exclusively as a stage actress, often with small companies, and frequently appeared with John Gielgud in the 1930s and 1940s. She performed with the Old Vic company, the Royal Court, the Shakespeare Memorial Theater, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the National Theater. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1956. She began taking more film and television roles in the 1970s, and won her greatest international acclaim in David Lean's 1984 film adaptation of the E. M. Forster novel A Passage to India, and in the television mini-series "The Jewel in the Crown," based on Paul Scott's Raj Quartet. She was married and divorced three times, and had two children.