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Winner of numerous awards including the British Academy Film Award and an Oscar nomination, actress Billie Whitelaw has had a long association with the works of Samuel Beckett, including appearing in “Footfalls,” which he wrote for her and directed in 1976.
In 1964, she was in the National Theatre Production of Beckett’s “Play,” and her other Beckett appearances include “Come and Go” (Royal Festival Hall), “Not I” (1973 and 1976) and “Happy Days” (1979), the latter directed by Beckett himself at the Royal Court Theatre.
In 1981, Whitelaw first performed in the United States in Beckett’s “Rockaby,” and in 1984 opened the Samuel Beckett Theatre in New York with a triple bill of Beckett works, “Enough,” “Footfalls” and “Rockaby,” directed by Alan Schneider and produced by Daniel Labeille. She performed the same plays at the National Theatre and the Riverside Studios in London, the Mark Taper Theatre in Los Angeles and the Adelaide Festival during a tour of Australia. The Pennebaker television documentary on the preparations for “Rockaby” has been shown all over the world.
Whitelaw started working as a child actress on radio at the age of 11. As a youngster, she joined Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop Company. Since then, she has appeared in more than 200 stage plays, films and plays for television and radio. In 1960, she won the Variety Club’s Best Actress Award, and both in 1960 and 1972 was voted TV Actress of the Year.
As a member of the National Theatre Company, she played opposite Laurence Olivier in “Othello” and in productions of “Hobson’s Choice” and “Trelawney of the of the Wells.” Other early theatre appearances include David Mercer’s “After Haggerty,” Michael Frayn’s “Alphabetical Order” and Simon Gray’s “Molly.” For the Royal Shakespeare Company, she appeared in “The Greeks” and “Passion Play.”
More recently, Whitelaw returned to the National Theatre for Christopher Hampton’s “Tales from Hollywood,” which won the Evening Standard Comedy Award. She also appeared in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” at the Young Vic.
As a film actress, she has starred with Albert Finney in “Charlie Bubbles” (1968) and “Gumshoe” (1970). For the first film, she won the U.S. National Society of Film Critics Award and the British Academy Film Award (BAFTA). Her other films include “The Adding Machine,” “Start the Revolution Without Me,” “Hell Is a City,” “Frenzy,” “Nightwatch,” “The Water Babies,” “No Job for a Woman” and “The Omen,” which won her the Evening Standard British Film Award for actress of the year in 1977, “Shadey,” “Dark Crystal” (voice only) and “The Dressmaker,” for which she won the 1989 BAFTA Film Actress of the Year award. Her more recent films include “Jane Eyre,” “The Krays,” “Lorna Doone,” “Quills” “Last of the Blonde Bombshells” and “Dinner of Herbs.”
Films for television include “Duel of Love,” “Murder of Quality” and “Born to Run,” as well as the filmed version of the Beckett triple bill of “Footfalls,” “Rockaby” and “Eh Joe.” On U.S. television, she has appeared in “The Poet Game,” “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” “A Tale of Two Cities,” “The Secret Garden” and “Camille.” Recent TV appearances include “The Picnic,” “The Chain,” “Jamaica Inn,” “The Fifteen Streets” and “Firm Friends.”
Whitelaw’s autobiography, “Billie Whitelaw…Who He?,” was published in 1996 by Hodder & Stoughton.
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