Cathleen Nesbitt

Cathleen Nesbitt
Cathleen Nesbitt in 1913
Born	Kathleen Mary Nesbitt (1888-11-24)24 November 1888 Cheshire, England, UK
Died	2 August 1982(1982-08-02) (aged 93) London, England
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1910–82
Spouse(s)	Cecil Beresford Ramage (1921–1982; her death); 2 children

Cathleen Nesbitt, CBE (24 November 1888 – 2 August 1982) was a British actress of stage, film and television.

Born in Cheshire, England to Thomas and Mary Catherine (née Parry) Nesbitt as Kathleen Mary Nesbitt in 1888 of Welsh and Irish descent, she was educated in Lisieux, France, and at the Queen's University of Belfast and the Sorbonne. Her younger brother, Thomas Nesbitt, Jr., acted in one film in 1925, before his death in South Africa in 1927 from an apparent heart attack.

She made her debut in London in the stage revival of Arthur Wing Pinero's The Cabinet Minister (1910). She acted in countless plays after that. In 1911, she joined the Irish Players, went to the United States and debuted on Broadway in The Well of the Saints. She also was in the cast of John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World with the Irish Players when the whole cast was pelted with fruits and vegetables by the offended Irish American Catholic audience. She became the love of English poet Rupert Brooke in 1912. Brooke wrote love sonnets to her, and they were engaged to be married when he died during World War I.

Nesbitt returned to the US and appeared on Broadway in Quinneys (1915) and John Galsworthy's Justice (1916) as John Barrymore's leading lady in his first dramatic stage role. After five other plays there, she returned to England. For the rest of the decade she performed in London; her roles included the title role in a revival of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. Her film debut was in the silent A Star Over Night (1919). She then performed in The Faithful Heart (1922). She did not appear in a film again until 1930, when she played the role of Anne Lymes in Canaries Sometimes Sing, which was an early talkie. In 1932, she appeared in The Frightened Lady. She appeared in the 1938 film version of Pygmalion as "a lady" who attends the Embassy ball. In the opening credits her first name was spelled as "Kathleen", but as "Cathleen" at the end of the film. She played the part of Mother in the 1949 BBC TV remake of the drama film Elizabeth of Ladymead.