Anna Raymond Massey CBE (11 August 1937 â€" 3 July 2011) was an
English actress. She won a BAFTA Award for the role of Edith Hope in
the 1986 TV adaptation of Anita Brookner's novel Hotel du Lac, a role
that one of her co-stars, Julia McKenzie, has said "could have been
written for her".Massey was born in Thakeham, Sussex, England, the
daughter of British actress Adrianne Allen and Canadian-born Hollywood
actor Raymond Massey. Her brother Daniel Massey was also an actor. She
was the niece of Vincent Massey, a Governor General of Canada, and her
godfather was film director John Ford.Although she had no formal
training at either drama school or in repertory, Anna Massey made her
first appearance on stage in May 1955 at the age of 17, at the Theatre
Royal, Brighton, as Jane in The Reluctant Debutante, subsequently
making her first London appearance in the same play at the Cambridge
Theatre in May 1955 "and was suddenly famous". She then left the cast
in London to repeat her performance in New York in October 1956. In
the 1990s she appeared with Alan Bennett in a dramatised reading of
T.S. Eliot's and Virginia Woolf's letters, in a production at the
Charleston Festival devised by Patrick Garland.
English actress. She won a BAFTA Award for the role of Edith Hope in
the 1986 TV adaptation of Anita Brookner's novel Hotel du Lac, a role
that one of her co-stars, Julia McKenzie, has said "could have been
written for her".Massey was born in Thakeham, Sussex, England, the
daughter of British actress Adrianne Allen and Canadian-born Hollywood
actor Raymond Massey. Her brother Daniel Massey was also an actor. She
was the niece of Vincent Massey, a Governor General of Canada, and her
godfather was film director John Ford.Although she had no formal
training at either drama school or in repertory, Anna Massey made her
first appearance on stage in May 1955 at the age of 17, at the Theatre
Royal, Brighton, as Jane in The Reluctant Debutante, subsequently
making her first London appearance in the same play at the Cambridge
Theatre in May 1955 "and was suddenly famous". She then left the cast
in London to repeat her performance in New York in October 1956. In
the 1990s she appeared with Alan Bennett in a dramatised reading of
T.S. Eliot's and Virginia Woolf's letters, in a production at the
Charleston Festival devised by Patrick Garland.
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