Siân Phillips

Welsh-born stage veteran Dame Siân Phillips is forever identified on television as the tarantula mother/empress Livia in the classic BBC miniseries I, Claudius (1976) (for which she won a BAFTA-TV award), and as the Reverend Mother in the science fiction epic film Dune (1984). Her broad range of roles went from endearing to downright deadly.

She was born Jane Elizabeth Ailwên Phillips on May 14, 1933, in Wales, to Sally (Thomas), a teacher, and David Phillips, a steelworker and policeman. Brought brought up bilingual in both English and Welsh, she performed on the Welsh radio station at age 11. She toured extensively for the Arts Council in Wales in original Welsh plays and in translations from the English classics before becoming an award-winning television actress in her late teens.

Siân attended the University of Wales and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), making her London debut in the title role of “Hedda Gabler” (1957). After a brief marriage, she met and married actor Peter O’Toole in 1959 and appeared frequently with him on stage, including “Ride a Cock Horse” (1965) and “Man and Superman” (1965), and in the movies Becket (1964), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969) (which earned her a National Society of Film Critics award and a Golden Globe Award nomination for “Best Supporting Actress”), Murphy’s War (1971) and Under Milk Wood (1971). They had two daughters, actresses Kate O’Toole and Pat O’Toole.

While her husky resonant voice served her well as an announcer, newsreader and narrator at different stages of her career, her severely chiseled looks and arch, regal bearing entitled her to perform some of the more notable classics, with critically-acclaimed turns in “Saint Joan”, “The Taming of the Shrew” and “The Duchess of Malfi”, being just a few. Siân’s occasional patricians have also graced such well-mounted films as Young Cassidy (1965), Nijinsky (1980) and The Age of Innocence (1993).

After 20 years of marriage, Siân divorced O’Toole, known for his carousing and hard-living ways. She quickly remarried a much younger actor, Britisher Robin Sachs, but they too would divorce in 1991. Despite her personal turmoil, she continued to delve into her stage work, beginning a new phase of her career in musicals. Her participation in such productions as “Pal Joey” (her musical debut), “Gigi” and “A Little Night Music” ultimately led to her acclaimed one-woman cabaret show “Marlene”, a tribute to legendary Marlene Dietrich, which opened to rave reviews in London in 1997. Two years later, she won a Tony Award nomination for this role on Broadway.

Over the years, Siân has distinguished herself regularly in such quality miniseries as Oresteia (1979), Crime and Punishment (1979), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979), Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981) (as Clementine Churchill), Smiley’s People (1982) (as Lady Smiley), The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1987) (as the Duchess of Windsor), A Killing on the Exchange (1987), The Snow Spider (1988), The Chestnut Soldier (1991), The Borrowers (1992) and its sequel The Return of the Borrowers (1993) (as Mrs. Driver) and Aristocrats (1999).

She has continued to work into the millennium with elderly roles on stage with “My Old Lady”, “Calendar Girls”, “Crossing Borders” (a cabaret show), “Les Liaisons Dangereuses”, “The Importance of Being Earnest”, “Playing for Time” and “Les Blancs”, while in movies she appeared in The Gigolos (2006), Love Song (2012), Miss Dalí (2018), Be Happy! (2019), Dream Horse (2020) and was the narrator and grandmother in a rather radical retelling, animated version of A Christmas Carol (2020). Siân was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire at the 2000 Queen’s Birthday Honours for her services to drama. She was also awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire at the 2016 Queen’s New Years Honours for her services to drama.