Margaret Leighton

Margaret Leighton, CBE (26 February 1922 – 13 January 1976) was an English actress, active on stage and television, and in film. Her film appearances included in Anthony Asquith's The Winslow Boy (her first credited film role), Alfred Hitchcock's Under Capricorn, Powell and Pressburger's The Elusive Pimpernel, George More O'Ferrall's The Holly and the Ivy, Martin Ritt's The Sound and the Fury, John Guillermin's Waltz of the Toreadors, Franklin J. Schaffner's The Best Man, Tony Richardson's The Loved One, John Ford's 7 Women, and Joseph Losey's The Go-Between and Galileo. For The Go-Between, she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Leighton began her career on stage in 1938, before joining the Old Vic and making her Broadway debut in 1946. A four-time Tony Award nominee, she twice won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play: for the original Broadway productions of Separate Tables (1957) and The Night of the Iguana (1962). She also won an Emmy Award for a 1970 television version of Hamlet. Life and career Born in Barnt Green, Worcestershire, Leighton made her stage debut as Dorothy in Laugh with Me (1938), which also was performed that year for BBC Television. She became a star of the Old Vic. Her Broadway debut was as the Queen in Henry IV (1946), starring Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson during a visit of the Old Vic to the U.S., and the company performed a total of five plays from its repertoire before returning to London. After appearing in two British films, including the starring role of Flora MacDonald opposite David Niven in Bonnie Prince Charlie (1948) and in the popular The Winslow Boy (also 1948), the actress appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Under Capricorn (1949) and the crime/mystery Calling Bulldog Drummond (1951). In the U.S., she portrayed the wife of a presidential candidate in The Best Man (1964).