Award-winning actor with a fastidious intelligence and a hint of inner steel
Anna Massey, who has died of cancer aged 73, made her name on the stage as a teenager in French-window froth. She then graduated, with effortless and extraordinary ease, to the classics and to the work of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and David Hare. In later years, she became best known for her award-winning work in television and film. What constantly impressed was her fastidious intelligence and capacity for stillness: always the mark of a first-rate actor.
Born in Thakeham, West Sussex, she was bred into show business although, in personal terms, that proved something of a mixed blessing. Her father was Raymond Massey, a Canadian actor who achieved success in Hollywood; her mother was Adrianne Allen who had appeared in the original production of Noël Coward's Private Lives. Anna's godfather was the film director John Ford.
Since...
Anna Massey, who has died of cancer aged 73, made her name on the stage as a teenager in French-window froth. She then graduated, with effortless and extraordinary ease, to the classics and to the work of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and David Hare. In later years, she became best known for her award-winning work in television and film. What constantly impressed was her fastidious intelligence and capacity for stillness: always the mark of a first-rate actor.
Born in Thakeham, West Sussex, she was bred into show business although, in personal terms, that proved something of a mixed blessing. Her father was Raymond Massey, a Canadian actor who achieved success in Hollywood; her mother was Adrianne Allen who had appeared in the original production of Noël Coward's Private Lives. Anna's godfather was the film director John Ford.
Since...
- 7/6/2011
- by Michael Billington, Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
The actor Anna Massey has died aged 73. We look back at her career in clips, from Peeping Tom to The Machinist
Anna Massey, who has died aged 73, had two distinct stages to her career: first as the innocent victim in the films of two master directors trying their hand at horror, and then as a wily, wide-eyed staple of period TV drama. Yet the two seemed absolutely apiece: Massey was such a singular actor, with a constant, unafraid gaze and keen intelligence, that looking back it's hard not to be struck by her curious agelessness.
Her screen debut in 1960 was as the heroine of Michael Powell's once-loathed, now-lauded Peeping Tom. She doesn't get much airtime in this trailer, but her almost bolshie naivete is startling: a clang of reality beside Carl Boehm's killer.
Twelve years later she accepted Alfred Hitchcock's invitation to all but reprise her role in "necktie murders" chiller Frenzy.
Anna Massey, who has died aged 73, had two distinct stages to her career: first as the innocent victim in the films of two master directors trying their hand at horror, and then as a wily, wide-eyed staple of period TV drama. Yet the two seemed absolutely apiece: Massey was such a singular actor, with a constant, unafraid gaze and keen intelligence, that looking back it's hard not to be struck by her curious agelessness.
Her screen debut in 1960 was as the heroine of Michael Powell's once-loathed, now-lauded Peeping Tom. She doesn't get much airtime in this trailer, but her almost bolshie naivete is startling: a clang of reality beside Carl Boehm's killer.
Twelve years later she accepted Alfred Hitchcock's invitation to all but reprise her role in "necktie murders" chiller Frenzy.
- 7/5/2011
- by Catherine Shoard
- The Guardian - Film News
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