Jean Simmons, the demure British beauty was born January 31, 1929, in Crouch End, London. A 14 year old dance student plucked from her school to play Margaret Lockwood's precocious sister in Give Us the Moon (1944), Simmons went on to make a name for herself in such major British productions as Caesar and Cleopatra (1946), Great Expectations (also 1946, as the spoiled, selfish Estella), Black Narcissus (also 1946, as a sultry native beauty), Hamlet (1948, playing Ophelia to Laurence Olivier's great Dane and earning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination), The Blue Lagoon (1949), and So Long at the Fair (1950), among others.

In 1950, Jean married actor Stewart Granger and that same year starred in the Sinatra musical "Guys and Dolls" (1955); Jean used her own singing voice and earned her first Golden Globe Award. Simmons divorced Granger in 1960, and almost immediately married writer-director Richard Brooks, who cast her as Sister Sharon opposite Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry (1960), a memorable adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel. That same year she costarred with Kirk Douglas in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus and played a would-be home-wrecker opposite Cary Grant in The Grass Is Greener.

Off the screen for a few years, she captivated moviegoers with a brilliant performance as the mother in All the Way Home (1963), a literate, tasteful adaptation of James Agee's "A Death in the Family." After that, however, she found quality projects somewhat harder to come by. Life at the Top (1965), Mister Buddwing (1966), Divorce American Style, Rough Night in Jericho (both 1967), The Happy Ending (1969, a Richard Brooks film for which she was again Oscar-nominated, this time as Best Actress)

Jean continued making films well into the 1970s. In the 1980s she mainly appeared in TV mini-series, such as "North and South" and "The Thorn Birds." Jean made a comeback to films in 1995 in "How to Make an American Quilt" co-starring Winona Ryder and Anne Bancroft and most recently played the elderly Sophie in the English version of Hayao Miyazaki's Howls Moving Castle. She now resides in Santa Monica, California with her dog Mr. Gates and her 2 cats Adisson and Megan.



Daughter, with Richard Brooks, Kate Brooks. Daughter, with Stewart Granger, Tracy Granger. Naturalized U.S. citizen. Jean was made an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) for services to acting in the 2003 New Year Honours List. In 1958, she accepted the Oscar for "Best Actor in a Leading Role" on behalf of Alec Guinness, who wasn't present at the awards ceremony In the early 1980s, she and daughter Kate Brooks lived in the Litchfield County town of New Milford, Connecticut. They later returned to their long-time California home in Santa Monica. In Italy, most of her films were dubbed by Fiorella Betti. She was occasionally dubbed by Dhia Cristiani during the mid-fifties, most notably in The Robe (1953). Other actresses like Miranda Bonansea, Rosetta Calavetta and Rina Morelli also lent their voice to Simmons at some point. From the sixties onwards, Maria Pia Di Meo became her official Italian voice. Was William Wyler's first choice for the role of Princess Ann in Roman Holiday (1953), but Howard Hughes, who owned her contract, wouldn't loan her out to Paramount to do the film. Became a U.S. citizen in 1956. She and Marlon Brando were originally supposed to lip-sync their songs in the musical film Guys and Dolls (1955/I). Samuel Goldwyn heard them during rehearsal and decided the untrained stars should do their own singing for authenticity. She is survived by her daughters; Tracy Granger and Kate Brooks; and one grandson, Ty Saville.