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Shirley Anne Field was one of Britain's most highly-respected actresses. She starred opposite Laurence Olivier, Albert Finney, Steve McQueen, Michael Caine, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Ned Beatty in such classic films as "The Entertainer", "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", "The War Lover", "Alfie", "My Beautiful Laundrette" and "Hear My Song".

As a teenager, she returned to London, her birthplace. She worked as a photographic model to pay her way through acting school, and had small parts in films. Her break came when she was cast as Tina the Beauty Queen opposite Sir Laurence Oliver in "The Entertainer". She credited Tony Richardson, the director, with starting her proper career.

Her role as "Doreen" in "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" soon followed. Only 22 years old, Shirley Anne was a major film star. Her next movie, "Man in the Moon", was featured in a Royal Command Performance. This resulted in her name being above the title in all the major cinemas around Leicester Square. Apparently, this is a record to this day.

A friend of Richardson told Shirley how he and Tony had gone to Leicester Square to see her name in lights. She worked with Albert Finney at the Royal Court in Lindsay Anderson's production of "The Lily White Boys". They later worked together again in "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", written by Alan Sillitoe.

Hollywood was paying attention. Shirley Anne was cast as the female lead in "The War Lover" opposite Steve McQueen and Robert Wagner. Then she starred in a Hollywood blockbuster, "Kings of the Sun", with Yul Brynner and George Chakiris, filmed in Mexico.

She interspersed her film career with theatre and TV performances in Britain and around the world. She played the lead in "Wait Until Dark" in South Africa. She played the part of "Pamela" in the U.S. television drama "Santa Barbara."

In the 1980s, she met up again with Stephen Frears, with whom she had worked when they were both beginners at the Royal Court. He cast her in "My Beautiful Laundrette", which was a big success and a breakthrough movie. Her next big film, "Hear My Song" in which she played Cathleen Doyle, was made in the 1990s.

In recent years, she toured in theatre productions such as "The Cemetery Club" and "Five Blue Hair Ladies Sitting on a Green Park Bench". Late in her career she appeared alongside Flora Spencer Longhurst in "Beautiful Relics", a short film directed by Adrian Hedgecock.

[being a young actress] It&#39;s a horrible experience being a teenager in the film industry: you&#39;re exposed to all the wrong influences. It was a very predatory world, you were always at risk.

Quotes

Shirley Anne Field

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