Billie Whitelaw

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Billie Whitelaw, CBE (born June 6, 1932 in Coventry, Warwickshire) is a distinguished English actress for both stage and film and has worked alongside notables such as Laurence Olivier, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Albert Finney, Peter Sellers, and Samuel Beckett (with whom she collaborated closely on theatrical techniques for twenty-five years). Appearing frequently on television, often in costume dramas such as Jane Eyre and A Tale of Two Cities, Whitelaw has won acclaim for her performances in dramas such as the BBC adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Wessex Tales and was awarded the CBE in 1991.

[edit] Life and work

Whitelaw grew up in a disadvantaged neighborhood and attended the Thornton Grammar School in Bradford. At age 11, she began performing as a child actor on radio programs and later worked as an assistant stage manager at a provincial theatre. After training at RADA, Whitelaw made her stage debut at age 22 in London 1950.

Making her film debut in The Sleeping Tiger (1954) as a secretary, Whitelaw soon becoming a regular in British films of the 1950s and 1960s.

Meeting in 1963, Whitelaw and famed Irish playwright Samuel Beckett enjoyed an intense professional relationship until his death in 1989. They collaborated and performed plays such as Play, Eh Joe, Krapp's Last Tape, Not I, Footfalls and Rockaby for both stage and screen. Whitelaw is regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of his works.

Married first to the actor Peter Vaughan, whom she divorced, Whitelaw later married writer and drama critic Robert Muller with whom she had a son. Her autobiography, Billie Whitelaw . . . Who He?, was published by St. Martin's Press (released in 1996). Whitelaw currently lives in Hampstead, London and continues to work on stage, films and television. She regularly gives lectures on the Beckettian technique.