Profile of Jessica Tandy on Famous Like Me

Jessica Tandy, christened Jessie Alice Tandy (June 7, 1909 – 11 September 1994) was a noted British-American theatre, film and TV actress. Born in London, England, she was married to the Canadian-American actor, the late Hume Cronyn from 1942 until her death in 1994. She is the mother of actress Tandy Cronyn, as well as a son, Christopher Cronyn, and was chosen by People magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the world in 1990. Later the same year, in a cruel irony, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, which she battled fiercely for 5 years, during which time she continued to work. She had also been treated for angina and glaucoma previously.

Jessica Tandy won her first Tony Award in 1948 for A Streetcar Named Desire, then again in 1978 for The Gin Game, and finally in 1982 for Foxfire. In 1979 she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre.

After an acting career spanning some 65 years, Tandy found latter-day movie stardom in major-studio releases and intimate dramas alike. From a young age she was determined to be an actress, and first appeared on the London stage in 1926, playing, among others, Katherine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V, and Cordelia opposite John Gielgud's King Lear. She also worked in British films. Following her first marriage to British actor Jack Hawkins, which resulted in a daughter, Susan Hawkins (born in 1934), she moved to New York and met Canadian actor Hume Cronyn, who became her second husband and frequent partner on stage and screen. She made her American film debut in The Seventh Cross (1944), and appeared in The Valley of Decision (1945), The Green Years (1946, as Cronyn's daughter!), and Forever Amber (1947). After her Tony-winning performance as Blanche DuBois in the original Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, she concentrated on the stage and only appeared sporadically in films such as The Light in the Forest (1957) and The Birds (1963).

The beginning of the 1980s saw a resurgence in her film career, with character roles in The World According to Garp, Best Friends, Still of the Night (all 1982) and The Bostonians (1984), and the hit film Cocoon (1985), opposite Cronyn, with whom she reteamed for *Batteries not included (1987) and Cocoon: The Return (1988). She and Cronyn had been working together more and more, on stage and television, to continued acclaim, notably in 1987's Foxfire which won her an Emmy Award (recreating her Tony-winning Broadway role). However, it was her colorful performance in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), as an aging, stubborn Southern-Jewish matron, that made her a bonafide Hollywood star and earned her an Academy Award. She was the oldest actor to ever win an Academy Award, beating out the late George Burns by less than a year. She subsequently earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her work in the grass-roots hit Fried Green Tomatoes (1992), and co-starred in The Story Lady (1991 telefilm, with daughter Tandy Cronyn), Used People (1992, as Shirley MacLaine's Jewish mother), To Dance With the White Dog (1993 telefilm, with husband, Hume Cronyn), Nobody's Fool (1994), and Camilla (also 1994, with Cronyn). Camilla was to be her last performance, and it was bold in one way that she, at the age of about 84 and knowing that she was dying, had a brief nude scene, which could also be called "cheeky".

She died at home on September 11, 1994, in Easton, Connecticut, of ovarian cancer at the age of 85, having outlived women half her age with the same disease, and continuing to work and make public appearances until almost the very end.

Filmography

• The Indiscretions of Eve (1932)
• Murder in the Family (1938)
• The Seventh Cross (1944)
• Blonde Fever (1944)
• The Valley of Decision (1945)
• Dragonwyck (1946)
• The Green Years (1946)
• Forever Amber (1947)
• A Woman's Vengeance (1948)
• September Affair (1950)
• The Desert Fox (1951)
• The Light in the Forest (1958)
• Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962)
• The Birds (1963)
• Butley (1976)
• Honky Tonk Freeway (1981)
• The World According to Garp (1982)
• Still of the Night (1982)
• Best Friends (1982)
• The Bostonians (1984)
• Cocoon (1985)
• *batteries not included (1987)
• The House on Carroll Street (1988)
• Cocoon: The Return (1988)
• Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
• Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)
• Used People (1992)
• A Century of Cinema (1994) (documentary)
• Nobody's Fool (1994)
• Camilla (1994)

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