Heather Sears
Encyclopedia
Heather Christine Sears: (28 September 1935 – 3 January 1994), was a British stage and screen actress.
in London. During her last year she signed an unusual 7-year contract with Romulus Films which allowed her an annual six months to do stage and television work if she wished. This was made possible through the good offices of the film director Jack Clayton
, her friend and mentor.
After graduating from drama school, she was active from 1955 onwards in the Windsor repertory theatre. A year later she made her film début with a minor role in Michael Truman
's Touch and Go (1955) and followed this up with the part of naive Susan in Maurice Elvey
's film version of comedy Dry Rot (1956).
Before she turned 22, Sears had made her début on the London stage, taking over the part of Alison from Mary Ure
in John Osborne
's Look Back in Anger
, playing alongside Richard Bates and Richard Pasco
. Shortly afterwards she played Claire Bloom
's role in the television production of Ring Round the Moon. Although her greatest contribution was in the area of repertory theatre (her preferred medium), her most enduring legacy is inevitably in films, mostly in the late fifties and early sixties, but also in her television work.
It was David Miller's film The Story of Esther Costello
which led to a breakthrough in her film career (at the age of 21) and international acclaim. In this film based on the novel by Nicholas Monsarrat
, Sears appears in the title rôle of a girl from Southern Ireland who loses her sight, hearing and power of speech as the result of a traumatic childhood accident (the explosion of an arms cache dating back to 'The Troubles'). She is adopted and brought up by a rich American society lady (played by Joan Crawford
who also actually chose Sears to play the part of Esther). Although the film itself was fairly lacklustre, it was her performance which impressed the critics more than anything else. She had to convey everything through her facial expressions which was an area in which she was to prove particularly gifted and which lent itself to close-ups that can only be achieved on film.
It was after this film that she married Tony Masters who had been one of the two art directors of the film. A year later she was nominated for the Golden Globe award and also received the British Film Academy award for best British actress of the year. After this initial success, she alternated between film and theatre until the mid-sixties.
In London she appeared at the Royal Court Theatre
with Alan Bates
and Richard Pearce in Jean Giraudoux
's The Apollo of Bellac under the direction of John Dexter
, in Michael Hastings
' Yes, and appeared at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith in Julien Green's play South. On screen, she was cast as Susan Brown, the naive daughter of an industrial magnate (Donald Wolfit
), who falls for Joe Lampton, angry young man and social climber (Laurence Harvey
), in the adaptation of John Braine
's novel Room at the Top (1959) directed by Jack Clayton.
Sears had a long association with France and French culture which began in her childhood when she spent summers in Brittany with pen friend Michelle. This is when she learnt to speak fluent French. After leaving school she spent time in Paris doing voice overs and dubbing work and enjoying the company of the Paris "in crowd" of artists and poets such as Pablo Picasso, Albert Camus and Arthur Koestler. She also had a life-long friendship with actress Simone Signoret
, who had starred as her rival for Joe Lampton's affections in Room at the Top.
In 1959, Sears was in Australia to act in the last Ealing
film The Siege of Pinchgut
(in the USA, Four Desperate Men) in which she plays the part of a girl hostage (daughter of the caretaker of the tiny island fort of Pinchgut in Sydney harbour) who forms a romantic liaison with an escaped convict (abetted by his brother and two accomplices) who has taken the caretaker and his family prisoner in an attempt to clear his name. The film ends in a dramatic shoot-out with the authorities. It later became a classic of the Australian cinema.
One year later, in the film adaptation of Lawrence
's semi-autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers
(1960), she appeared as Miriam, the girlfriend and intellectual companion of Paul Morel (Dean Stockwell
). Directed by Jack Cardiff
, it was nominated for seven oscars, including Best Picture, and won one for its cinematography.
In 1962, Sears appeared as the opera singer Christine Charles in Hammer's production of The Phantom of the Opera
in which her singing voice was dubbed by opera performer Pat Clark. In 1964 she appeared as Lady Elizabeth in the Italian-style horror film The Black Torment which was marketed in the USA as Estate of Insanity and dubbed in German as Man stirbt nur zweimal (You only die twice).
Over the next few years, she gradually withdrew from the film world to bring up her three growing sons, Adam, Giles and Dominic. Adam Masters is today a film and television editor and has two children, Grace Masters and Freddie Masters - Giles and Dominic are feature film art directors. However, Sears continued to do some work for television and appeared in numerous BBC and ITV dramas until 1981. She also appeared in two more plays: as Grusha in Brecht
's The Caucasian Chalk Circle
at the Chichester Festival Theatre
in 1969 and also in Alan Ayckbourn
's comedy How the Other Half Loves in London's West End.
In the 1970s she returned to provincial repertory theatre. She was based at the Haymarket Theatre
in Leicester where she played title roles in classical plays by Sophocles
(Antigone
and Elektra
), Shakespeare, Goldsmith
, Dostoyevsky, Ibsen
(Hedda Gabler) and Strindberg
(Miss Julie), but also in the work of more modern playwrights such as Liane Aukin (Little Lamb) alongside Bill Wallis and Perry Cree, Brecht (The Caucasian Chalk Circle), Ayckbourn (How the Other Half Loves), Rattigan
and Pinter
. She also toured with the One-Woman-Show playing Virginia Woolf
. She later appeared in a television film adaptation of Dickens
’ semi-autobiographical novel Great Expectations (1975) as Biddy. In 1989 she made her last screen appearance in The Last Day of School directed by Amin Q. Chaudhri, in which she plays a working mother who supports her husband, and makes a mark for herself as an entrepreneur.
In the last ten years of her life she travelled extensively, spending many months in Mexico, China, Italy, North Africa and Egypt. Her husband, Tony Masters, died in May 1990 whilst on holiday with her in the south of France. They used to go there every year during the Cannes film festival. She did not remarry.
Heather Sears died in early 1994 of multiple organ failure, at the comparatively early age of 58, at the family home in Esher, Surrey.
• 1958: Best British Actress in Esther Costello
Golden Globe
• 1958: nominated as Best Supporting Actress in Esther Costello
Biography
Although not from an acting family (her father was a distinguished London doctor), she was already acting in plays at the age of five and even writing them at the age of eight. When she was sixteen she followed her elder sister Ann Sears (1933–1992) to the Central School of Speech and DramaCentral School of Speech and Drama
The Central School of Speech and Drama was founded in London in 1906 by Elsie Fogerty to offer a new form of training in speech and drama for young actors and other students...
in London. During her last year she signed an unusual 7-year contract with Romulus Films which allowed her an annual six months to do stage and television work if she wished. This was made possible through the good offices of the film director Jack Clayton
Jack Clayton
Jack Clayton was a British film director who specialised in bringing literary works to the screen.-Career:A native of East Sussex, Clayton started his career as a child actor on the 1929 film Dark Red Roses...
, her friend and mentor.
After graduating from drama school, she was active from 1955 onwards in the Windsor repertory theatre. A year later she made her film début with a minor role in Michael Truman
Michael Truman
Michael Truman was a British film producer, director and editor.Educated at London University, he worked for Ealing Studios editing such films as It Always Rains on Sunday and Passport to Pimlico and latterly as producer of films like The Titfield Thunderbolt...
's Touch and Go (1955) and followed this up with the part of naive Susan in Maurice Elvey
Maurice Elvey
Maurice Elvey was the most prolific film director in British history. He directed nearly 200 films between 1913 and 1957. During the silent film era he directed as many as twenty films per year....
's film version of comedy Dry Rot (1956).
Before she turned 22, Sears had made her début on the London stage, taking over the part of Alison from Mary Ure
Mary Ure
Eileen Mary Ure was a Scottish actress of stage and film.-Early life:Born in Glasgow where she studied at the school of drama, Ure was the daughter of civil engineer Colin McGregor Ure and Edith Swinburne. She went to the independent Mount School in York and trained for the stage at the Central...
in John Osborne
John Osborne
John James Osborne was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and critic of the Establishment. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre....
's Look Back in Anger
Look Back in Anger
Look Back in Anger is a John Osborne play—made into films in 1959, 1980, and 1989 -- about a love triangle involving an intelligent but disaffected young man , his upper-middle-class, impassive wife , and her haughty best friend . Cliff, an amiable Welsh lodger, attempts to keep the peace...
, playing alongside Richard Bates and Richard Pasco
Richard Pasco
Richard Edward Pasco, CBE is a British stage, screen and TV actor.-Early life:Pasco was born in Barnes, London, the son of Phyllis Irene and Cecil George Pasco. He was educated at the King's College School, Wimbledon...
. Shortly afterwards she played Claire Bloom
Claire Bloom
Claire Bloom is an English film and stage actress.-Early life:Bloom was born in the North London suburb of Finchley, the daughter of Elizabeth and Edward Max Blume, who worked in sales...
's role in the television production of Ring Round the Moon. Although her greatest contribution was in the area of repertory theatre (her preferred medium), her most enduring legacy is inevitably in films, mostly in the late fifties and early sixties, but also in her television work.
It was David Miller's film The Story of Esther Costello
The Story of Esther Costello
The Story of Esther Costello is a 1957 British drama film starring Joan Crawford, Rossano Brazzi, and Heather Sears . The film is an exposé of large-scale fundraising. The Story of Esther Costello was produced by David Miller and Jack Clayton with Miller directing...
which led to a breakthrough in her film career (at the age of 21) and international acclaim. In this film based on the novel by Nicholas Monsarrat
Nicholas Monsarrat
Commander Nicholas John Turney Monsarrat RNVR was a British novelist known today for his sea stories, particularly The Cruel Sea and Three Corvettes , but perhaps best known internationally for his novels, The Tribe That Lost Its Head and its sequel, Richer Than All His Tribe.- Early life :Born...
, Sears appears in the title rôle of a girl from Southern Ireland who loses her sight, hearing and power of speech as the result of a traumatic childhood accident (the explosion of an arms cache dating back to 'The Troubles'). She is adopted and brought up by a rich American society lady (played by Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford , born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American actress in film, television and theatre....
who also actually chose Sears to play the part of Esther). Although the film itself was fairly lacklustre, it was her performance which impressed the critics more than anything else. She had to convey everything through her facial expressions which was an area in which she was to prove particularly gifted and which lent itself to close-ups that can only be achieved on film.
It was after this film that she married Tony Masters who had been one of the two art directors of the film. A year later she was nominated for the Golden Globe award and also received the British Film Academy award for best British actress of the year. After this initial success, she alternated between film and theatre until the mid-sixties.
In London she appeared at the Royal Court Theatre
Royal Court Theatre
The Royal Court Theatre is a non-commercial theatre on Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is noted for its contributions to modern theatre...
with Alan Bates
Alan Bates
Sir Alan Arthur Bates CBE was an English actor, who came to prominence in the 1960s, a time of high creativity in British cinema, when he demonstrated his versatility in films ranging from the popular children’s story Whistle Down the Wind to the "kitchen sink" drama A Kind of Loving...
and Richard Pearce in Jean Giraudoux
Jean Giraudoux
Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. His work is noted for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy...
's The Apollo of Bellac under the direction of John Dexter
John Dexter
John Dexter was an English theatre, opera, and film director.- Theatre :Born in Derby, England, Dexter left school at the age of fourteen to serve in the British army during World War II. Following the war, he began working as a stage actor before turning to producing and directing shows for...
, in Michael Hastings
Michael Hastings
Michael Hastings or Mike Hastings may refer to:*Michael Hastings , British playwright, screen-writer, novelist and poet...
' Yes, and appeared at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith in Julien Green's play South. On screen, she was cast as Susan Brown, the naive daughter of an industrial magnate (Donald Wolfit
Donald Wolfit
Sir Donald Wolfit, KBE was a well-known English actor-manager.-Biography:Wolfit, who was "Woolfitt" at birth was born at New Balderton, near Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire and attended the Magnus Grammar School and made his stage début in 1920...
), who falls for Joe Lampton, angry young man and social climber (Laurence Harvey
Laurence Harvey
Laurence Harvey was a Lithuanian-born actor who achieved fame in British and American films.- Early life :Harvey maintained throughout his life that his birth name was Laruschka Mischa Skikne. However, his legal name was Zvi Mosheh Skikne. He was the youngest of three boys born to Ber "Boris" and...
), in the adaptation of John Braine
John Braine
John Gerard Braine was an English novelist. Braine is usually associated with the Angry Young Men movement.-Biography:...
's novel Room at the Top (1959) directed by Jack Clayton.
Sears had a long association with France and French culture which began in her childhood when she spent summers in Brittany with pen friend Michelle. This is when she learnt to speak fluent French. After leaving school she spent time in Paris doing voice overs and dubbing work and enjoying the company of the Paris "in crowd" of artists and poets such as Pablo Picasso, Albert Camus and Arthur Koestler. She also had a life-long friendship with actress Simone Signoret
Simone Signoret
Simone Signoret was a French cinema actress often hailed as one of France's greatest movie stars. She became the first French person to win an Academy Award, for her role in Room at the Top...
, who had starred as her rival for Joe Lampton's affections in Room at the Top.
In 1959, Sears was in Australia to act in the last Ealing
Ealing Studios
Ealing Studios is a television and film production company and facilities provider at Ealing Green in West London. Will Barker bought the White Lodge on Ealing Green in 1902 as a base for film making, and films have been made on the site ever since...
film The Siege of Pinchgut
The Siege of Pinchgut
The Siege of Pinchgut is a 1959 British thriller film directed by Harry Watt. It was entered into the 9th Berlin International Film Festival. It was the last film from Ealing Studios.-Plot:...
(in the USA, Four Desperate Men) in which she plays the part of a girl hostage (daughter of the caretaker of the tiny island fort of Pinchgut in Sydney harbour) who forms a romantic liaison with an escaped convict (abetted by his brother and two accomplices) who has taken the caretaker and his family prisoner in an attempt to clear his name. The film ends in a dramatic shoot-out with the authorities. It later became a classic of the Australian cinema.
One year later, in the film adaptation of Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
's semi-autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers
Sons and Lovers (1960 film)
Sons and Lovers is a British 1960 film adaptation of the D. H. Lawrence novel Sons and Lovers. It was adapted by T. E. B. Clarke and Gavin Lambert and directed by Jack Cardiff...
(1960), she appeared as Miriam, the girlfriend and intellectual companion of Paul Morel (Dean Stockwell
Dean Stockwell
Dean Stockwell is an American actor of film and television, with a career spanning over 65 years. As a child actor under contract to MGM he first came to the public's attention in films such as Anchors Aweigh and The Green Years; as a young adult he played a lead role in the 1957 Broadway and...
). Directed by Jack Cardiff
Jack Cardiff
Jack Cardiff, OBE, BSC was a British cinematographer, director and photographer.His career spanned the development of cinema, from silent film, through early experiments in Technicolor to filmmaking in the 21st century...
, it was nominated for seven oscars, including Best Picture, and won one for its cinematography.
In 1962, Sears appeared as the opera singer Christine Charles in Hammer's production of The Phantom of the Opera
The Phantom of the Opera (1962 film)
The Phantom of the Opera is a 1962 British film based on the novel by Gaston Leroux. The film was made by Hammer Film Productions.-Plot:The film opens in Victorian London on a December night in 1900....
in which her singing voice was dubbed by opera performer Pat Clark. In 1964 she appeared as Lady Elizabeth in the Italian-style horror film The Black Torment which was marketed in the USA as Estate of Insanity and dubbed in German as Man stirbt nur zweimal (You only die twice).
Over the next few years, she gradually withdrew from the film world to bring up her three growing sons, Adam, Giles and Dominic. Adam Masters is today a film and television editor and has two children, Grace Masters and Freddie Masters - Giles and Dominic are feature film art directors. However, Sears continued to do some work for television and appeared in numerous BBC and ITV dramas until 1981. She also appeared in two more plays: as Grusha in Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
's The Caucasian Chalk Circle
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. An example of Brecht's epic theatre, the play is a parable about a peasant girl who rescues a baby and becomes a better mother than its natural parents....
at the Chichester Festival Theatre
Chichester Festival Theatre
Chichester Festival Theatre, located in Chichester, England, was designed by Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya, and opened by its founder Leslie Evershed-Martin in 1962. Subsequently the smaller and more intimate Minerva Theatre was built nearby in 1989....
in 1969 and also in Alan Ayckbourn
Alan Ayckbourn
Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their...
's comedy How the Other Half Loves in London's West End.
In the 1970s she returned to provincial repertory theatre. She was based at the Haymarket Theatre
Haymarket Theatre (Leicester)
The Haymarket Theatre was a theatre in Leicester, England, based in the Haymarket Shopping Centre on Belgrave Gate in Leicester city centre. The theatre closed at the end of 2006 and has been replaced by the Curve Theatre...
in Leicester where she played title roles in classical plays by Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
(Antigone
Antigone (Sophocles)
Antigone is a tragedy by Sophocles written in or before 442 BC. Chronologically, it is the third of the three Theban plays but was written first...
and Elektra
Electra (Sophocles)
Electra or Elektra is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes and the Oedipus at Colonus lead scholars to suppose that it was written towards the end of Sophocles' career.Set in the city of Argos a few years after the Trojan...
), Shakespeare, Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer, poet and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village , and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer...
, Dostoyevsky, Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
(Hedda Gabler) and Strindberg
August Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...
(Miss Julie), but also in the work of more modern playwrights such as Liane Aukin (Little Lamb) alongside Bill Wallis and Perry Cree, Brecht (The Caucasian Chalk Circle), Ayckbourn (How the Other Half Loves), Rattigan
Terence Rattigan
Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan CBE was one of England's most popular 20th-century dramatists. His plays are generally set in an upper-middle-class background...
and Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
. She also toured with the One-Woman-Show playing Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
. She later appeared in a television film adaptation of Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
’ semi-autobiographical novel Great Expectations (1975) as Biddy. In 1989 she made her last screen appearance in The Last Day of School directed by Amin Q. Chaudhri, in which she plays a working mother who supports her husband, and makes a mark for herself as an entrepreneur.
In the last ten years of her life she travelled extensively, spending many months in Mexico, China, Italy, North Africa and Egypt. Her husband, Tony Masters, died in May 1990 whilst on holiday with her in the south of France. They used to go there every year during the Cannes film festival. She did not remarry.
Heather Sears died in early 1994 of multiple organ failure, at the comparatively early age of 58, at the family home in Esher, Surrey.
Selected Filmography
- 1955: Touch and GoTouch and Go (1955 film)Touch and Go is a Technicolor British film comedy, directed by Michael Truman and released by Ealing Studios in 1955. The film was indifferently received on release and is not generally included in the canon of classic Ealing Comedies...
- 1956: Dry RotDry Rot (film)Dry Rot is a 1956 British comedy film directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Ronald Shiner, Brian Rix, Peggy Mount and Sid James.The story is an adaptation of a 1954 farce by John Roy Chapman who also wrote the screenplay, in which the sketchy story plays second fiddle to the quick-paced action and...
- 1957: The Story of Esther CostelloThe Story of Esther CostelloThe Story of Esther Costello is a 1957 British drama film starring Joan Crawford, Rossano Brazzi, and Heather Sears . The film is an exposé of large-scale fundraising. The Story of Esther Costello was produced by David Miller and Jack Clayton with Miller directing...
- 1959: Room at the Top
- 1959: The Siege of PinchgutThe Siege of PinchgutThe Siege of Pinchgut is a 1959 British thriller film directed by Harry Watt. It was entered into the 9th Berlin International Film Festival. It was the last film from Ealing Studios.-Plot:...
(Four Desperate Men) - 1960: Sons and LoversSons and Lovers (1960 film)Sons and Lovers is a British 1960 film adaptation of the D. H. Lawrence novel Sons and Lovers. It was adapted by T. E. B. Clarke and Gavin Lambert and directed by Jack Cardiff...
- 1962: The Phantom of the OperaThe Phantom of the Opera (1962 film)The Phantom of the Opera is a 1962 British film based on the novel by Gaston Leroux. The film was made by Hammer Film Productions.-Plot:The film opens in Victorian London on a December night in 1900....
- 1964: The Black TormentThe Black TormentThe Black Torment is a 1964 British gothic horror film, directed by Robert Hartford-Davis and starring John Turner, Heather Sears and Ann Lynn. The film is set in 18th-century Devon and was scripted by brothers Donald and Derek Ford...
(Estate of Insanity) - 1964: Saturday Night OutSaturday Night OutSaturday Night Out is a 1964 British comedy drama film directed by Robert Hartford-Davis and starring Heather Sears, John Bonney, Bernard Lee, Erika Remberg, Francesca Annis, Margaret Nolan and David Lodge. A trio of merchant seamen and several passengers disembark from their ship when it arrives...
- 1975: Great Expectations
- 1989: The Last Day of School
Awards
British Film Academy• 1958: Best British Actress in Esther Costello
Golden Globe
• 1958: nominated as Best Supporting Actress in Esther Costello
External links
- Biography from Allmovie at movies.nytimes.com
- Photoportraits of Heather Sears in The National Portrait Gallery