Susannah York, 1939–2011

Blonde, blue-eyed, and strikingly beautiful, actress Susannah York had a horror of being typecast as a demure English ingenue. “I was terrified people would think I was dull,” she told an interviewer. “The truth was I was a bit of a rebel.” She proved her daring with her choices of film roles, including Childie, a neurotic, manipulative lesbian in 1968’s The Killing of Sister George, as well as with her provocative political stands. When she dedicated a 2007 performance of a one-woman show in Tel Aviv to Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli dissident jailed for revealing the existence of Israel’s nuclear arsenal, the audience erupted in jeers, mingled with a few cheers.

York “held a generation of male admirers in her thrall,” said the London Sunday Telegraph. She was born Susannah Yolande Fletcher in London; her father was a merchant banker and her mother the daughter of a diplomat. She grew up in Scotland, where she lived with her mother after her parents divorced. Her “rebellious streak” showed itself at 13 when she was expelled from school for skinny-dipping in the school pool. Stagestruck at an early age, she thrilled to the applause she received when playing a stepsister in a school production of Cinderella. That inspired her to apply to the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. “She wept with joy” when she was accepted.

York won notice for her performance in 1961’s Loss of Innocence, in which she played “a teenager discovering her power over men,” said The Washington Post. But it was her portrayal of the chaste but alluring Sophie Western, opposite Albert Finney in 1963’s Tom Jones, that turned her into an international star. Other high-profile parts soon followed, including the role of Sir Thomas More’s daughter Margaret in A Man for All Seasons in 1966, followed by a memorable turn as “a vulnerable Hollywood hopeful” in 1969’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? That portrayal, which climaxed in a breakdown in a shower, won her an Oscar nomination. She caused a minor scandal when she scolded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for nominating her without first asking her permission.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Acting was far from her only interest, said the London Guardian. She was “politically active and supported causes ranging from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament” to the effort to free Vanunu. She was also devoted to her two children, Orlando and Sasha, the products of her 1960 marriage to fellow actor Michael Wells. (The couple divorced in 1976 but remained on good terms.)

Although she played the superhero’s mother in the 1978 version of Superman and in two sequels, her film roles gradually dried up. She remained active in theater and television, but continued wishing for edgier parts, as evidenced by the imaginary want ad she dictated in a 1991 interview. “Hard-working character actress who longs to play drunks and nasties,” she said. “Can also do comedy, she’s been told.”