Rachel Roberts (British actress)
Encyclopedia
Rachel Roberts was a Welsh
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 actress noted for her fervour and passion; Roberts is best remembered for her forthright screen performances in two key films of the 1960s, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (film)
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is a 1960 British film. It is an adaptation of the 1958 novel of the same name by Alan Sillitoe. Sillitoe wrote the screenplay adaptation and the film was directed by Karel Reisz.-Synopsis:...

and This Sporting Life
This Sporting Life
This Sporting Life is a 1963 British film based on a novel of the same name by David Storey which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award. It tells the story of a rugby league footballer, Frank Machin, in Wakefield, a mining area of Yorkshire, whose romantic life is not as successful as his sporting...

, in both of which she played the older mistress of the central male character. In Australia, she is remembered for her performance as Mrs Appleyard in Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Picnic at Hanging Rock is a 1967 drama and mystery novel by Australian author Joan Lindsay. She wrote it over a four-week period at her home Mulberry Hill in Baxter, on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula. It was first published in 1967 in Australia by Cheshire Publishing and was released in...

.

Career

After a Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...

 upbringing (against which she rebelled), followed by study at the University of Wales
University of Wales
The University of Wales was a confederal university founded in 1893. It had accredited institutions throughout Wales, and formerly accredited courses in Britain and abroad, with over 100,000 students, but in October 2011, after a number of scandals, it withdrew all accreditation, and it was...

 and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art is a drama school located in London, United Kingdom. It is generally regarded as one of the most renowned drama schools in the world, and is one of the oldest drama schools in the United Kingdom, having been founded in 1904.RADA is an affiliate school of the...

, she began working with a repertory company in Swansea in 1950. She made her film debut in the Welsh-set comedy Valley of Song (1953), directed by Gilbert Gunn
Gilbert Gunn
-Selected filmography:Screenwriter* Save a Little Sunshine * Me and My Pal * The Door with Seven Locks Director* Valley of Song * My Wife's Family * Girls at Sea...

.

Her portrayal of Brenda in Karel Reisz
Karel Reisz
Karel Reisz was a Czech-born British filmmaker who was active in post–war Britain, and one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in 1950s and 1960s British cinema.-Early life:...

's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (film)
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is a 1960 British film. It is an adaptation of the 1958 novel of the same name by Alan Sillitoe. Sillitoe wrote the screenplay adaptation and the film was directed by Karel Reisz.-Synopsis:...

(1960) won her a British Academy Film Award
British Academy Film Awards
The British Academy Film Awards are presented in an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts . It is the British counterpart of the Oscars. As of 2008, it has taken place in the Royal Opera House, having taken over from the flagship Odeon cinema on Leicester Square...

. Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Gordon Anderson was an Indian-born, British feature film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave...

 cast her as the suffering Mrs Hammond in This Sporting Life
This Sporting Life
This Sporting Life is a 1963 British film based on a novel of the same name by David Storey which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award. It tells the story of a rugby league footballer, Frank Machin, in Wakefield, a mining area of Yorkshire, whose romantic life is not as successful as his sporting...

(1963), earning another BAFTA and an Oscar
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...

 nomination. Both films were significant examples of the British New Wave
British New Wave
The British New Wave is the name given to a trend in filmmaking among directors in Britain in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The label is a translation of Nouvelle Vague, the French term first applied to the films of François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard among others.There is considerable overlap...

 of film-making.

In theatre, she performed at the Royal Court and played the title role as the life-enhancing tart in Lionel Bart
Lionel Bart
Lionel Bart was a writer and composer of British pop music and musicals, best known for creating the book, music and lyrics for Oliver!-Early life:...

's musical Maggie May
Maggie May (musical)
Maggie May is a musical with a book by Alun Owen and music and lyrics by Lionel Bart.Based on "Maggie May", a traditional ballad about a Liverpool prostitute, it deals with trade union ethics and disputes and the life of streetwalker Margaret Mary Duffy after her sweetheart dies.The show includes...

(1964). In films, she continued to play women with lusty appetites as in Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man!
O Lucky Man!
O Lucky Man! is a 1973 British comedy-drama fantasy film, intended as an allegory on life in a capitalist society. Directed by Lindsay Anderson, it stars Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis, whom McDowell had first played as a disaffected public schoolboy in his first film performance in Anderson's...

(1973), although the haunting Australian-made Picnic at Hanging Rock
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Picnic at Hanging Rock is a 1967 drama and mystery novel by Australian author Joan Lindsay. She wrote it over a four-week period at her home Mulberry Hill in Baxter, on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula. It was first published in 1967 in Australia by Cheshire Publishing and was released in...

(1975), directed by Peter Weir
Peter Weir
Peter Lindsay Weir, AM is an Australian film director. After playing a leading role in the Australian New Wave cinema with his films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave and Gallipoli, Weir directed a diverse group of American and international films—many of them major box office...

, provided her with a different kind of role, as the authoritarian head teacher of a Victorian girls' school.

After relocating to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 in the early 1970s, she appeared in supporting roles in several American films such as Foul Play
Foul Play
Foul Play is a 1978 American comic mystery/thriller film written and directed by Colin Higgins. In it, a recently divorced librarian is drawn into a mystery when a stranger hides a roll of film in a pack of cigarettes and gives it to her for safekeeping....

(1978). Her final British film was Yanks
Yanks
Yanks is a 1979 John Schlesinger film, set in World War II in the village of Dobcross, in Greater Manchester, England. Starring Richard Gere, Vanessa Redgrave, William Devane, Lisa Eichhorn, Rachel Roberts and Tony Melody....

(1979), directed by John Schlesinger
John Schlesinger
John Richard Schlesinger, CBE was an English film and stage director and actor.-Early life:Schlesinger was born in London into a middle-class Jewish family, the son of Winifred Henrietta and Bernard Edward Schlesinger, a physician...

, for which she received a Supporting Actress BAFTA.

In 1979, Roberts co-starred with Jill Bennett in the London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television was the name of the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties including south Suffolk, middle and east Hampshire, Oxfordshire, south Bedfordshire, south Northamptonshire, parts of Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Warwickshire, east Dorset and...

 production of Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research mediaeval history at the university for several years...

's The Old Crowd, directed by Lindsay Anderson and Stephen Frears
Stephen Frears
Stephen Arthur Frears is an English film director.-Early life:Frears was born in Leicester, England to Ruth M., a social worker, and Dr Russell E. Frears, a general practitioner and accountant. He did not find out that his mother was Jewish until he was in his late 20s...

.

Personal life and suicide

She married firstly Alan Dobie
Alan Dobie
Alan Russell Dobie , is a British actor.Dobie was born in Wombwell, Yorkshire, England, to George Russell and Sarah Kate Dobie. His father was a mining engineer and his mother's family were farmers. He was married to actress Rachel Roberts from 1955-61 then married Maureen Scott in 1963...

 (1955–1961), then Rex Harrison
Rex Harrison
Sir Reginald Carey “Rex” Harrison was an English actor of stage and screen. Harrison won an Academy Award and two Tony Awards.-Youth and stage career:...

 (1962–1971). Both marriages ended in divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...

. Her alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...

 and depression
Depression (mood)
Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless...

 increased after her divorce from Harrison. Devastated over their divorce, she moved to Hollywood in 1975 and tried to forget the relationship. In 1980, a final attempt to win Harrison back proved futile; and, impulsive and insecure, she committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

 by taking an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol on 26 November 1980, at her home in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

.

It was reported that her death was a result of swallowing lye, alkali, or another unidentified caustic substance as well as the barbiturates, as detailed in her posthumously published journals. The acidic effect of the poisonous agent was an immediate cause of death, which propelled her through a decorative glass divide between two rooms. Her body was found by her gardener on her kitchen floor, cut to ribbons and lying amidst shards of glass. The coroner reported the cause of death as "swallowing a caustic substance" and, later, "acute barbiturate
Barbiturate
Barbiturates are drugs that act as central nervous system depressants, and can therefore produce a wide spectrum of effects, from mild sedation to total anesthesia. They are also effective as anxiolytics, as hypnotics, and as anticonvulsants...

 intoxication". It was ruled a suicide. She was 53 years old.

She was cremated
Cremation
Cremation is the process of reducing bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and bone fragments. This is accomplished through high-temperature burning, vaporization and oxidation....

 at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory
Chapel of the Pines Crematory
Chapel of the Pines Crematory is a crematory and columbarium located at 1605 South Catalina Street Los Angeles, California, in the historic West Adams District a short distance southwest of Downtown...

 in Los Angeles. Her journals became the basis for No Bells on Sunday: The Memoirs of Rachel Roberts (1984).

In 1992, Roberts' ashes, along with those of her very good friend Jill Bennett, were scattered on the River Thames
River Thames
The River Thames flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford,...

 in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 by director Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Gordon Anderson was an Indian-born, British feature film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave...

 during a boat trip, with several of the two actresses' professional colleagues and friends aboard; musician Alan Price
Alan Price
Alan Price is an English musician, best known as the original keyboardist for the English band The Animals, and for his subsequent solo work....

 sang "Is That All There Is?
Is That All There Is?
"Is That All There Is?" is a song written by American songwriting team Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller during the 1960s. It became a hit for American singer Peggy Lee from her recording in November 1969...

". The event was included as a segment in Anderson's BBC documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

, also titled Is That All There Is?.

Filmography

Film
Year Film Role Notes
1953 Valley of Song Bessie Lewis Alternative title: Men Are Children Twice
The Limping Man
The Limping Man
The Limping Man is a 1953 British film directed by Cy Endfield , starring American actor Lloyd Bridges and Cape Town born actress Moira Lister. The film was based on Anthony Verney's novel Death on the Tideway and was released in the U.S...

Barmaid
1954 The Weak and the Wicked
The Weak and the Wicked
The Weak and the Wicked is a 1954 British drama film directed by J. Lee Thompson based on the book by his wife, Joan Henry, starring Glynis Johns and Diana Dors....

Pat, pregnant inmate Alternative title: Young and Willing
The Crowded Day
The Crowded Day
The Crowded Day is a 1954 British drama film directed by John Guillermin and starring John Gregson, Joan Rice and Sid James. The film follows a group of shopgirls working in Bunting and Hobbs, a department store during the Christmas period.-Cast:...

Maggie Alternative title: Shop Spoiled
1957 The Good Companions
The Good Companions (1957 film)
The Good Companions is a 1957 British musical film directed by J. Lee Thompson and starring Eric Portman. It is based on the novel of the same name and is a remake of the 1933 film version.-Cast:* Eric Portman - Jess Oakroyd* Celia Johnson - Miss Trant...

Elsie and Effie Longstaff
1959 Our Man in Havana
Our Man in Havana (film)
Our Man in Havana is a 1959 film directed and produced by Carol Reed and starring Alec Guinness, Burl Ives, Maureen O'Hara, Ralph Richardson, Noel Coward and Ernie Kovacs. The film is adapted from the novel of the same name by Graham Greene...

Prostitute Uncredited
1960 Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (film)
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is a 1960 British film. It is an adaptation of the 1958 novel of the same name by Alan Sillitoe. Sillitoe wrote the screenplay adaptation and the film was directed by Karel Reisz.-Synopsis:...

Brenda
1961 Girl on Approval Anne Howland
1963 This Sporting Life
This Sporting Life
This Sporting Life is a 1963 British film based on a novel of the same name by David Storey which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award. It tells the story of a rugby league footballer, Frank Machin, in Wakefield, a mining area of Yorkshire, whose romantic life is not as successful as his sporting...

Mrs. Margaret Hammond
1968 A Flea in Her Ear Suzanne de Castilian
1969 The Reckoning Joyce Eglington Alternative title: A Matter of Honour
1971 Doctors' Wives
Doctors' Wives (1971 film)
Doctors' Wives is a 1971 American drama film directed by George Schaefer and starring Dyan Cannon, Gene Hackman, Carroll O'Connor, Richard Crenna, Janice Rule, John Colicos, and Rachel Roberts. It was based on a novel by Frank G. Slaughter.-Plot:...

Della Randolph
Wild Rovers
Wild Rovers
Wild Rovers is a 1971 American Western film directed by Blake Edwards and starring William Holden and Ryan O'Neal.Originally intended as a three-hour epic, it was heavily edited and changed by the studio without Edwards' knowledge, including a reversal of the ending from a negative one to a positive...

Maybell (town madam)
1973 Alpha Beta Nora Elliot
The Belstone Fox Cathie Smith Alternative title: Free Spirit
O Lucky Man!
O Lucky Man!
O Lucky Man! is a 1973 British comedy-drama fantasy film, intended as an allegory on life in a capitalist society. Directed by Lindsay Anderson, it stars Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis, whom McDowell had first played as a disaffected public schoolboy in his first film performance in Anderson's...

Gloria Rowe/Madame Paillard/Mrs. Richards
1974 Murder on the Orient Express
Murder on the Orient Express (1974 film)
Murder on the Orient Express is a 1974 British mystery film directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot, and based on the1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.-Overview:...

Hildegarde Schmidt
1975 Picnic at Hanging Rock
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Picnic at Hanging Rock is a 1967 drama and mystery novel by Australian author Joan Lindsay. She wrote it over a four-week period at her home Mulberry Hill in Baxter, on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula. It was first published in 1967 in Australia by Cheshire Publishing and was released in...

Mrs. Appleyard
1978 Foul Play
Foul Play
Foul Play is a 1978 American comic mystery/thriller film written and directed by Colin Higgins. In it, a recently divorced librarian is drawn into a mystery when a stranger hides a roll of film in a pack of cigarettes and gives it to her for safekeeping....

Delia Darrow/Gerda Casswell
1979 Yanks
Yanks
Yanks is a 1979 John Schlesinger film, set in World War II in the village of Dobcross, in Greater Manchester, England. Starring Richard Gere, Vanessa Redgrave, William Devane, Lisa Eichhorn, Rachel Roberts and Tony Melody....

Mrs. Clarrie Moreton
When a Stranger Calls
When a Stranger Calls (1979 film)
When a Stranger Calls is a 1979 thriller starring Carol Kane and Charles Durning, directed by Fred Walton. The film derives its story from the classic folk legend of "The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs". The original music score is composed by television composer Dana Kaproff.The film ranked #28...

Dr. Monk
1981 Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen Mrs. Dangers
Television
Year Title Role Notes
1958–1959 Our Mutual Friend
Our Mutual Friend (1958 TV serial)
Our Mutual Friend is a 1958 British television mini-series adapted from the Charles Dickens novel Our Mutual Friend. The series was made by the BBC and ran through 1959 for a total of twelve episodes.-Cast and characters:...

Lizzie Hexam Miniseries
1960 On Trial Mrs. Rogerson 1 episode
BBC Sunday-Night Play Mrs. Holyoake 1 episode
1963 The Eleventh Hour
The Eleventh Hour (1962 TV series)
The Eleventh Hour is an American medical drama about psychiatry starring Wendell Corey, Jack Ging, and Ralph Bellamy, which aired sixty-two new episodes plus selected rebroadcasts on NBC from October 3, 1962, to September 9, 1964.-Series premise:...

Mary Newell 1 episode
1966 ITV Play of the Week Lady Hamilton 1 episode
Out of the Unknown
Out of the Unknown
Out of the Unknown is a British television science fiction anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC2 in four series between 1965 and 1971. Each episode was an independent dramatisation of a separate science fiction short story...

Anna Preston 1 episode
Blithe Spirit Ruth Condomine Television movie
1969 Destiny of a Spy Megan Thomas Television movie
Happy Ever After 1 episode
1970 Night Gallery
Night Gallery
Night Gallery is an American anthology series that aired on NBC from 1970 to 1973, featuring stories of horror and the macabre. Rod Serling, who had gained fame from an earlier series, The Twilight Zone, served both as the on-air host of Night Gallery and as a major contributor of scripts, although...

Rebecca Brigham 1 episode
1971 Marcus Welby, M.D.
Marcus Welby, M.D.
Marcus Welby, M.D. is an American medical drama television program that aired on ABC from September 23, 1969, to July 29, 1976. It starred Robert Young as a family practitioner with a kind bedside manner, and was produced by David Victor and David J. O'Connell...

Dr. Victoria Thorson 1 episode
1973 Baffled!
Baffled!
Baffled! is a 1973 television movie intended as a pilot for a television series. The story is part of the occult detective sub-genre.Race car driver Tom Kovack suddenly begins to experience psychic visions. He meets Michelle Brent , an expert on the paranormal, and the two form an unlikely...

Mrs. Farraday Television movie
1974 Graceless Go I Television movie
Play for Today
Play for Today
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted...

Olwen 1 episode
Great Expectations
Great Expectations (1974 film)
Great Expectations is a 1974 film made for television based on the Charles Dickens novel of the same name. It was directed by Joseph Hardy, with screenwriter Sherman Yellen and music by Maurice Jarre, starring Michael York as Pip and Sarah Miles as Estella...

Mrs. Gargery Television movie
1976 The Tony Randall Show
The Tony Randall Show
The Tony Randall Show is an American television sitcom that debuted on September 23, 1976 and aired on ABC during its first season and on CBS for its second and final season.-Synopsis:...

Mrs. Bonnie McClellen 1 episode
1977 A Circle of Children Helga Television movie
1979 Family
Family (TV series)
Family is an American television drama series that aired on ABC from 1976 to 1980. Creative control of the show was split between executive producers Leonard Goldberg, Aaron Spelling and Mike Nichols...

Angela Brown 1 episode
The Old Crowd Pauline Television movie
3 by Cheever: The Sorrows of Gin Mrs. Henlein Television movie
1980 The Hostage Tower
The Hostage Tower
The Hostage Tower is a 1980 American spy and thriller telemovie starring Peter Fonda and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and directed by Claudio Guzmán, well-known for his work in sitcoms. It is based on a book of the same name by John Denis writing as Alistair MacLean. The book was written deliberately for...

Sonya Television movie
1982 The Wall Regina Kowalska Television movie

External links

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