[Deathwatch] Irene Worth, Actress, 85

Tue, 12 Mar 2002 21:42:14 -0800 (PST)

Tony Winner Irene Worth Dies at 85

http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/wire/sns-ap-obit-worth0312mar11.st
ory?coll=sns-ap-entertainment-headlines

By MICHAEL KUCHWARA
AP Drama Writer

March 11, 2002, 10:06 PM EST

NEW YORK -- Irene Worth, the elegant, three-time Tony-winning actress
in such plays as "Tiny Alice," "Sweet Bird of Youth" and "Lost in
Yonkers" and whose many classical roles ranged from the Greeks to
Shakespeare to Chekhov and Shaw, has died. She was 85. 

Worth died at a New York hospital Sunday of a stroke, said her sister,
Carol Johnson of Santa Monica, Calif. 

The actress, known for her distinct voice and patrician manner, worked
extensively in theater on both sides of the Atlantic, appearing on
Broadway, in London's West End and with such companies as the Old Vic,
the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre of Great Britain
and Canada's Stratford Festival. 

Worth received her first Tony for best actress in 1965 for playing the
wealthiest woman in the world, the mysterious title character in Edward
Albee's "Tiny Alice." 

"She had a beauty and a uniqueness, especially when she spoke," said
actress Marian Seldes, who was Worth's standby in "Tiny Alice." "The
timbre of her voice was like a musical instrument, a cello perhaps, and
because it was so beautiful, you remembered what she said. That's why
playwrights liked her." 

Worth received her second best-actress prize in 1976 for her portrayal
of an aging but still glamorous movie star in a memorable revival of
Tennessee Williams' "Sweet Bird of Youth," appearing in the play
opposite a young Christopher Walken. 

Her third Tony, this time in the featured-actress category, came in
1991 for "Lost in Yonkers," as the distant, domineering mother in Neil
Simon's Pulitzer Prize-winning play. She repeated her role in the 1993
film version. Simon called Worth "an extraordinary actress, certainly
one of the finest I've ever worked with." 

Worth's Shakespeare repertoire was extensive. For the Old Vic in the
1950s, she appeared as Lady Macbeth, Desdemona in "Othello," Helena in
`A Midsummer Night's Dream" and Portia in "The Merchant of Venice." 

At the 1953 inaugural season of Canada's Shakespeare Memorial Theatre
in Stratford, Ontario, she appeared in "All's Well That Ends Well" and
"Richard III." She also played Goneril in Peter Brook's acclaimed Royal
Shakespeare Company production of "King Lear" and was a fierce Jocasta
in Brook's version of "Oedipus" at the National Theatre. 

Born in Nebraska, Worth graduated from the University of California at
Los Angeles. She made her Broadway debut in 1943 in "The Two Mrs.
Carrolls," and a year later, moved to London where she would live for
over three decades, appearing in such plays as "Native Son" in 1948 and
T.S. Eliot's "The Cocktail Hour," the following season. Among her other
West End successes were the French farce "Hotel Paradiso" (1956) and
Noel Coward's "Suite in Three Keys" (1966). 

Yet Worth also continued to work on Broadway, getting a Tony nomination
for "Toys in the Attic," the 1960 Lillian Hellman drama. She received
another Tony nomination in 1976 for her role in the Joseph Papp
production of "The Cherry Orchard" at Lincoln Center. 

Among her other memorable roles was a reunion with Walken in a Public
Theater production of "Coriolanus" off-Broadway in 1988. 

In 1999, Worth had a stroke just before she was to begin preview
performances in a Broadway revival of Anouilh's "Ring Round the Moon,"
and she never appeared in the production. Her last stage appearance was
last September at the Almeida Theatre in London where she appeared with
Paul Scofield in the two-character play, "I Take Your Hand in Mine." 