fiction.wikisort.org - Actor

Josette Patricia Simon OBE (born c. 1959) is a British actress. She trained for the stage at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and played the part of Dayna Mellanby in the third and fourth series of the television sci-fi series Blake's 7 from 1980 to 1981. On stage, she has appeared in Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) productions from 1982, playing Ariel in The Tempest, to 2018 when she was Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra. The first black woman in an RSC play, Simon has been at the forefront of 'colour-blind casting', playing roles traditionally taken by white actresses, including Maggie, a character that is thought to be based on Marilyn Monroe, in Arthur Miller's After the Fall at the National Theatre in 1990.

Josette Simon OBE
Born	Josette Patricia Simon c. 1959 (age 62–63) Leicester, England
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1976–present
Notable credits	Love's Labour's Lost (Rosaline, 1984) Measure for Measure (Isabella, 1987) Milk and Honey (Joanna, 1988) After The Fall (Maggie, 1990) Antony and Cleopatra (Cleopatra, 2018)
Television	Blake's 7 Bitter Harvest Seekers Anatomy of a Scandal
Spouse	Mark Padmore ​ (divorced)​

Her first leading role at the RSC, the first for a black actress, was as Rosaline, in Love's Labour's Lost, directed by Barry Kyle, in 1984. In 1987, Simon appeared for the RSC again, in the lead role of Isabelle in Measure for Measure. Later leading roles for the RSC saw her as Titania/Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999–2000) and Cleopatra in Antony And Cleopatra (2017–18). She has played numerous other roles across stage, television, film, and radio.

Simon won the Evening Standard's Best Actress award, a Critics' Circle Theatre Award, and Plays and Players Critic Awards for After the Fall, and two film festival awards for her part in Milk and Honey (1988). She was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2000, for services to drama.

Early life

Josette Patricia Simon was born c. 1959 in Leicester.[1][2] Her mother, from Anguilla, and her father, from Antigua had both moved to Leicester in the 1950s, and worked at Thorn EMI.[3][4][5] Simon attended Rushey Mead primary school, followed by Alderman Newton's Girls School.[6] She became interested in acting after successfully auditioning, aged 14, with a friend for the choir for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Simon later appeared in pantomimes before finishing secondary school,[6][2][4] and played Martha in a 1976 production of The Miracle Worker directed by Michael Bogdanov at the Leicester Haymarket Theatre.[3] Alan Rickman, who was in the production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, encouraged Simon to apply for the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and she was accepted.[7][8]

Career

Blake's 7

Simon won the part of Dayna Mellanby in the BBC 1 television sci-fi series Blake's 7 after being talent-spotted while still at the Central School of Speech and Drama.[9][10] Simon played Mellanby in the third and fourth series, originally broadcast between January 1980 and December 1981.[11][12] The character was an expert combatant and highly knowledgeable about weapons.[13]^: 101

Royal Shakespeare Company, and Royal National Theatre

Simon has performed frequently with the Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre.[9] After taking part in a reading of Salvation Now by Snoo Wilson in 1982,[14][15] she was cast as one of the three "weird sisters" in Macbeth alongside Kathy Behean and Lesley Sharp later that year.[16][4] In the same RSC season, she had roles in Much Ado About Nothing, as a spirit in The Tempest and as Iras in Antony And Cleopatra. She was with the RSC for two consecutive two-year season cycles, and in the second cycle her roles included Nerissa in The Merchant Of Venice and starring as Dorcas Ableman in Golden Girls.[14] In 1997 she told academic Alison Oddey that what she learnt from working with Michael Gambon and, particularly, Helen Mirren for Antony And Cleopatra had been an early influence on her career.[3]

Simon was the first black woman to appear in a Shakespeare play at the RSC.[14] She has been at the forefront of 'colour-blind casting', playing roles traditionally taken by white actresses.[17][18][19] From the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, a time when it was unusual for black women to feature as leads in leading Shakespeare plays, Simon played several major roles for the RSC. Her first leading role, and the first for a black actress at the RSC, was as Rosaline, in Love's Labour's Lost, directed by Barry Kyle, in 1984.[14] Jami Rogers, in her book British Black and Asian Shakespeareans (2022) commented that in Kyle's production, where the women were dressed in Belle Époque-style silk dresses, Rosalie's clothing "immediately marked her as a woman of high status ...For the first time on a major British stage, an African-Caribbean woman portrayed an intelligent, witty and strong leading Shakespearean character."[14] Rogers described the reviews of the production as "glowing".[14] She noted that some reviewers and academics "treated Josette Simon's casting ... as a novelty", criticising the description of integrated casting as an "experiment" as "deeply problematic as it infers the practice is an aberration rather than what it was [by 1990], a common practice".[14] Simon told Oddey that , despite being conscious of discussions about whether audiences would accept a black actress as Rosaline, "I also felt that you should be allowed to fail, because if you don't take risks you can't reach higher planes" and that she had focused on her performance rather than debates around her casting, saying that "If I had thought about those things beforehand, I would not have set foot on the stage".[3]^: 53

In 1987, Simon appeared for the RSC again, in the lead role of Isabelle in Measure for Measure, directed by Nicholas Hynter.[20][21] In a review of the Stratford production, Michael Coveney of the Financial Times felt that Simon "fails ... with the full range of the role. Like so many of this season's leading ladies, she is technically underpowered."[22] Irving Wardle wrote in The Times that:[23]

"Play and casting both dictate that Josette Simon's Isabella should be the only nobly uncorrupted figure on stage. It is necessary for the scheme, and Miss Simon, a burnished icon of impassioned purity, fulfills it to the letter ... The penalty is that she emerges as less humanly interesting than the surrounding hypocrites and sensualists."

The play transferred to the Theatre Royal, Newcastle, and then to the Barbican in 1988.[24] Financial Times critic Martin Hoyle wrote of the Barbican production that Simon "has transformed her voice, both timbre and enunciation .... Incisive, vocally varied, though slightly lacking the full weight for the early emotional climaxes, she gives the best performance I have seen from her, dignified and touching."[25] In The Times in 1991, Benedict Nightingale opined that by casting Simon as Isabella and Rosaline, and Hugh Quarshie in other plays, the RSC had been "launching two performers of huge potential".[26]

In 2014, the RSC's Head of Casting, Hannah Miller, explained that the RSC's policy was to select the best actor for the role regardless of factors including gender, race, class, and disability status. Academic Lynette Goddard argued that despite the RSC's inclusive policy, black actresses still had limited opportunities to progress, "which makes Josette Simon's case all the more compelling".[21]^: 81 Goddard commented that "the more well known Simon became, the less compelled reviewers felt to mention race".[19]^: 227 Simon told David Jays of The Guardian in 2017 that "I hate the term 'black actor' ... I'm black, which I'm proud of, but it doesn't mean anything. You're an actor, full stop."[4] Colour-blind casting also applied when Simon played Maggie in Arthur Miller's After the Fall at the National Theatre in 1990. The character is thought to have been based on Marilyn Monroe, who was married to Miller.[19] It was a performance that won Simon the Evening Standard's Best Actress award,[27] Critics' Circle Theatre Award and Plays and Players Critic Awards.[28][29] Miller attended rehearsals for two weeks, and Simon told Oddey that, like playing Rosaline, meeting Miller was one of the key moments in her career, and the experience helped her to focus on her work and disregard distractions.[3] Simon portrayed Vittoria in the Royal National Theatre's The White Devil in 1991.[30]

Simon returned to the RSC in 1999 as Queen Elizabeth in Don Carlos. Nightingale described her performance as " vivid and vital".[31] Next, she was Titania/Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Financial Times reviewer wrote that Simon spoke "Titania's lines with an almost jazz musicality, dances, moves, and stands with compelling power. Her stance alone is more regal than that of several of today's ballerinas."[32] Paul Taylor of The Independent called the production's Nicolas Jones and Simon " the sexiest, most commanding Oberon and Titania of recent years".[33]

In 2017, Simon took the role of Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra for the RSC. Michael Billington wrote for The Guardian that "Simon seems born to play Cleopatra and she gives us a hypnotically mercurial figure whose eroticism is expressed through a permanent restlessness", although he felt that Simon employed too many voices in the role.[34] Making a similar criticism about the range of accents used, Ian Shuttleworth of the Financial Times felt that Simon failed to play to her strengths as an actor, and concluded that "On the occasion of Simon's first RSC appearance this century, she is heartbreaking in all the wrong ways."[35] Ann Treneman of The Times felt that Simon, with a performance that was "quite bonkers" at times, provided the highlight of the show, despite a "lamentable lack of chemistry" between her and Anthony Byrne as Antony.[36]

Other roles

In 1992 Simon was the lead, and sang, in David Zane Mairowitz's play Dictator Gal, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 1992. Her character is married to an exiled dictator who is dying in hospital. Simon's character sings a range of songs, including Richard Wagner and Motown compositions in an attempt to revive him.[37] [38] Her performance garnered a Prix Futura Award nomination.[39]

Simon's film appearances include the part of Dr. Ramphele in Cry Freedom (1987).[40][9] She was nominated for a Genie Awards Best Actress award for Milk and Honey (1988),[41] in which she played Joanna, who leaves Jamaica with her child to work as a nanny in Toronto. Rick Groen of The Globe and Mail wrote that Simons "riveting performance ... carries the picture" for the first part, but felt that from the second act onward, the film descended into histrionics.[42] In the San Francisco Chronicle, Judy Stone praised Simon's performance as Joanna, commenting that "she displays a quality of grace all too rare in today's films".[40]

The 1992 television play Bitter Harvest had Simon in the lead role, as a woman who has gone missing after travelling to the Dominican Republic as an aid worker and whose parents go there in search of her. Academic Claire Tylee considered that Simon's character was a "credible protagonist", the film was adversely affected by a mismatch between the thriller plotline from the production's originator Charles Pattinson and the thread about tensions in a mixed race family introduced by Winsome Pinnock, who has joined the project after Simon had already accepted the leading role based on a plot outline by Pattinson. According to Tylee, neither Simon's character or the character of her father "sufficiently resembles the usual hero of a thriller to successfully play on thriller conventions, and the plots end by humiliating both of them, fetishising the black female body along the way."[43]^{: 106–107}

In 1993, Simon starred alongside Brenda Fricker in the two-part television series Seekers, written by Lynda La Plante. Their characters discover that they are both married to the same man, who has now disappeared. They later work as partners in the detective agency that he had founded.[44] Lynda Gilbey of Sunday Life wrote that the show was "a first class detective drama ... beautifully plotted, wonderfully performed".[45] The Newcastle Journal reviewer Norman Davison commented that the two lead actresses "invested the roles with the sort of power that all La Plante women seem to have and the men were all the wimps".[46]

Benedict Nightingale of The Times wrote in a negative review of Jean Genet's play The Maids in 1997 that Simon provided the "one strong performance".[47] In 2019 she appeared as Cynthia in the science fiction series Nightflyers,[48] and as Grams in the movie Detective Pikachu.[49] She had a recurring role in Anatomy of a Scandal in 2022.[50] Simon has played senior police officers in Silent Witness (1998),[49], Minder (2009),[51], and Broadchurch (2017),[49], and has been cast as Chief Commissioner Camberwell in the Anansi Boys, which was in production as of May 2022.[52]

Personal life

Simon visits patients, with her dog Milo, through the charity Pets As Therapy,[7] and supports the Kaos Signing Choir for Deaf and Hearing Children.[53][54] She is a patron of Action Deafness,[55] the Life and Deaf Association,[56] the Deaf Ethnic Women's Association,[57] and Safety Curtain.[58]

Simon married tenor Mark Padmore; the couple had one daughter together but are now divorced.[7]

Honours and awards

In 1995, Simon was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree by the University of Leicester.[9][59] In the 2000 Birthday Honours she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), for services to drama.[1] She received a Pioneers and Achievers award in 1998, in recognition of being one of the people from Leicester who had "paved the way for the next generations of African Caribbean people to achieve and excel in a diverse range of professions and spheres of influence".[39][60]

Acting awards and nominations

Award	Year[lower-alpha 1]	Nominated work	Category	Result	Ref.
Atlantic Film Festival of Canada	1988	Milk and Honey	Best Actress	Won	[39]
Genie Awards	1989	Milk and Honey	Best Actress	Nominated	[41]
Paris Film Festival	1990	Milk and Honey	Best Actress	Won	[39]
Evening Standard Theatre Awards	1990	After the Fall	Best Actress	Won	[61]
Plays and Players Critic Awards	1990	After the Fall	Best Actress	Won	[28]
Critics' Circle Theatre Award	1990	After the Fall	Best Actress	Won	[29]
Laurence Olivier Awards	1991	After the Fall	Best Actress	Nominated	[62]
Prix Futura Award	1993	Dictator Gal		Nominated	[39]

Filmography

Television and streaming

Channels and dates are for the United Kingdom unless otherwise indicated.

Year	Title`	Role	Notes	Ref.
1980–1981	Blake's 7	Dayna Mellanby	BBC1. 26 episodes.	[11][12]
1980	The Cuckoo Waltz			[63]
1980	The Squad	Noble Bartlett		[64][65]
1984	Play for Today	Linda King	BBC1. Episode: "King".	[66][67]
1986	Pob's Programme	guest	Channel 4	[68]
1986	Harem	Geisla	TV Movie	[69]
1986	Save a Life		BBC1	[70]
1986	Umbrella		BBC1	[71]
1986	The Pyrates	Sheba	BBC2	[72][73]
1988	Thompson	Various roles	BBC1. 2 episodes.	[74][75]
1989	Screen Two: Here is the News		BBC2	[76]
1989	Capital City	Beatrice	Episode: "Take Over"	[49]
1990	When Love Dies	Annabel	Channel 4	[77]
1992	A Child from the South	Nadia	TV Movie	[69][3]
1992	Bitter Harvest	Vivienne Johnson	BBC2	[49][78]
1992	Nice Town	Frankie	3 episodes	[79]
1993	Seekers	Susie	Both episodes	[44]
1994	Black Christmas: Shooting Stars	narrator		[80]
1995	Henry IV	Kate	BBC	[81][82]
1997	Bridge of Time	Fatima	ABC. TV movie.	[83][84]
1997	Kavanagh QC	Dr. Hilary Jameson	ITV. Episode: "Blood Money".	[49]
1998	Dalziel and Pascoe	Eileen Anstiss	BBC One. Episode: "Bones and Silence".	[49]
1998	Silent Witness	DCI Jo Hoskins	BBC One. Episodes: "Divided Loyalties: Part 1 & 2".	[49]
1999	Polterguests	Dilys Tring	ITV	[3][85]
2003	The Last Detective	Jemma Duvall	ITV. Episode: "Lofty".	[49]
2006	Poirot	Mirelle Milesi	Episode: "The Mystery of the Blue Train"	[49]
2006	Casualty	Sarah Keith	BBC One. Episodes: "The Sunny Side of the Street, Part 1 & 2".	[citation needed]
2007	Lewis	Stephanie Fielding	ITV. Episode: "Expiation".	[49]
2008	Skins	Elaine	E4. Episode "Jal".	[49][86]
2009	Minder	DI Murray	Channel 5	[51]
2009–10	Casualty	Frances Liveley	BBC One. 7 episodes.	[87]
2011	Silent Witness	Mrs Ferris	BBC One. Episode: "First Casualty: Part 2".	[88]
2012	New Tricks	Vera	BBC One. Episode: "Queen and Country".	[89]
2012	Merlin	BBC One. Euchdag / The Diamair	Episode: "Arthur's Bane: Part One & Two"	[90]
2014	Death in Paradise	Judge Anne Stone	BBC One. Episode: "An Artistic Murder".	[91]
2014	Suspects	Dr. Melanie Standish	Channel 5	[49]
2016	NW	Theodora Lewis Lane	BBC Two	[49]
2017	Broadchurch	Chief Superintendent Clark	ITV. 3 episodes.	[49]
2018	The Split	Maya	BBC One.	[92]
2018	Jagarna	Ayanda Moganedi		[93]
2019	Nightflyers	Cynthia	Syfy	[48]
2019	Queens of Mystery	Tallulah Savage-Hughes	Acorn TV. 2 episodes, "Death by Vinyl"	[94][95]
2020	Riviera	Cynthia Akuffo	Sky Atlantic. Series 3, episodes 7 and 8.	[96][97]
2020	The Witcher	Eithne	Netflix	[7]
2020	Absentia	Rowena Kincade	Amazon Prime Video	[98]
2020	Shakespeare and Hathaway	Henrietta Bolingbroke	BBC One. Episode "How The Rogue Roar'd"	[99]
2020	Small Axe	Lydia Thomas	BBC One. Episode "Education".	[100]
2021	The Mallorca Files	Anna Hammond	BBC One. Episode: "The Maestro".	[101]
2022	Anatomy of a Scandal	Angela Regan	Netflix. 6 episodes.	[50][102]
2022	The Girlfriend Experience	Lindsey	Starz	[103]
2022	Halo	Desiderata	Paramount+. Episode "Inheritance".	[104]
2022	Crossfire	Miriam	BBC One
In Production	Anansi Boys	Chief Commissioner Camberwell	Amazon Prime Video	[52]

Theatre

Year	Title	Role	Company/Theatre	Director	Ref.[lower-alpha 2]
1976	The Miracle Worker	Martha	Leicester Haymarket Theatre	Michael Bogdanov	[3]
1982	Salvation Now[lower-alpha 3]	Estelle Namier	Royal Shakespeare Company	Dusty Hughes	[15]
1982, 1983	Macbeth	Weird Sister	Royal Shakespeare Company	Howard Davies	[15]
1982, 1983	Much Ado About Nothing	Josetta & Servant to Hero	Royal Shakespeare Company	Terry Hands	[15]
1982, 1983	Peer Gynt	Herd Girl; Anitra & Wedding Guest	Royal Shakespeare Company	Ron Daniels	[15]
1982, 1983	The Tempest	Spirit	Royal Shakespeare Company	Ron Daniels	[15]
1982, 1983	Antony And Cleopatra	Iras	Royal Shakespeare Company	Adrian Noble	[15]
1983	Much Ado About Nothing	Margaret	Royal Shakespeare Company	Terry Hands	[15]
1983	The Custom of the Country	Tendai	Royal Shakespeare Company	David Jones	[15]
1984, 1985	The Merchant Of Venice	Nerissa	Royal Shakespeare Company	John Caird	[15]
1984, 1985	Golden Girls	Dorcas Ableman	Royal Shakespeare Company	Barry Kyle	[15]
1984	The Party	Lindie Mann	Royal Shakespeare Company	Howard Davies	[15]
1984, 1985	Love's Labour's Lost	Rosaline	Royal Shakespeare Company	Barry Kyle	[15]
1984	The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc	Joan	Royal Shakespeare Company	AJ Quinn	[15]
1987, 1988	Measure For Measure	Isabella	Royal Shakespeare Company	Nicholas Hytner	[15]
1990	After The Fall	Maggie	Royal National Theatre	Michael Blakemore	[21]
1991	The White Devil	Vittoria	Royal National Theatre	Philip Prowse	[30]
1995	The Taming of the Shrew	Katherina	Leicester Haymarket Theatre	Mihai Măniuțiu	[21]
1997	The Maids	Our Lady	Donmar Warehouse	John Crowley	[47][105]
1999	Don Carlos	Queen Elizabeth	Royal Shakespeare Company	Gail Edwards	[15]
1999, 2000	A Midsummer Night's Dream	Titania/Hippolyta	Royal Shakespeare Company	Michael Boyd	[15]
2001	The Vagina Monologues		Old Vic Theatre		[106]
2017, 2018	Antony And Cleopatra	Cleopatra	Royal Shakespeare Company	Iqbal Khan	[15]

Radio

Year	Title`	Role	Notes	Ref.
1992	Dictator Gal	the Gal	BBC Radio 3	[38]
1996	The Roads to Freedom	Ivich	BBC Radio 4	[107]
1996	Picasso's Women	Marie-Thérèse	BBC Radio 3	[108]
2007	Words and Music	reader	BBC Radio 3. Episode "Slavery and Freedom".	[109]
2008	Words and Music	reader	BBC Radio 3. Episode "Birth and Rebirth".	[110]
2011	Words and Music	reader	BBC Radio 3. Episode "Law and Order".	[111]
2018	Choir and Organ	guest	BBC Radio 3	[112]
2018	Inheritance Tracks	guest	BBC Radio 4	[113]
2019	Words and Music	presenter	BBC Radio 3. Episode "Windrush: Some Kind of Homecoming".	[114]

Film

Year	Title	Role	Ref.
1987	Cry Freedom	Dr. Ramphele	[40]
1988	Milk and Honey	Joanna Bell	[40]
2012	Red Lights	Corinne	[115]
2017	Wonder Woman	Mnemosyne	[49]
2019	Detective Pikachu	Grams	[49]
2020	The Witches	Zelda	[116]

Notes

References

External links

• Josette Simon at IMDb 
• RSC Performance Database: Josette Simon
• Interview in the Leicester Mercury

На других языках

---

[de] Josette Simon

Josette Patricia Simon OBE (* 15. November 1960 in Leicester, England) ist eine britische Schauspielerin.

---

- [en] Josette Simon

---

[ru] Саймон, Джозетт

Джозе́тт Са́ймон (англ. Josette Simon; род. 15 ноября 1960[1], Лестер) — британская актриса театра, кино и телевидения, изредка также выступает как актриса озвучивания.

---

---