Irene Worth

Lore & Background

Worth made her Broadway debut in 1943, joined the Old Vic company in 1951 and the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962. She won the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress for the 1958 film Orders to Kill. Her other film appearances included Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) and Deathtrap (1982). A three-time Tony Award winner, she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Tiny Alice in 1965 and Sweet Bird of Youth in 1976, and won the 1991 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for Lost in Yonkers, a role she reprised in the 1993 film version. One of her later stage performances was opposite Paul Scofield in the 2001 production of I Take Your Hand in Mine at the Almeida Theatre in London.

Reader's Guide

Harriett Elizabeth Abrams was born in Fairbury, Nebraska, the eldest of three children born to Mennonite parents, Heinrich 'Henry' Abrams (who was born in Russia) and Agnes (Thiessen) Abrams, both teachers. The family moved from Nebraska to Southern California in 1920. She was educated at Newport Harbor High School, Santa Ana Junior College, and UCLA. After graduation, she followed her parents and became a teacher, while pursuing acting. She changed her name to Irene Worth and by 1944 had settled in London, where she remained for much of her career. Worth joined the Old Vic company in 1951, where she worked with Tyrone Guthrie and played the roles of Desdemona in Othello, Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Portia in The Merchant of Venice and her first Lady Macbeth. The company went to South Africa with Worth as one of the leading ladies. In 1953, she joined the fledgling Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario for its inaugural season. There she was the principal leading lady, performing under an enormous tent with Alec Guinness in All's Well That Ends Well and Richard III. Also in Stratford, she was an acclaimed Hedda Gabler, a role she considered one of her more satisfying achievements and which prompted Walter Kerr to write a glowing review of her theatrical talent in The New York Times. Worth returned to London in N.C. Hunter's 'Chekhovian' drama A Day by the Sea, with a cast that included John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson. She joined the Midland Theatre Company in Coventry for Ugo Betti's The Queen and the Rebels. In the 1950s Worth played in the farce Hotel Paradiso in London with Alec Guinness. In Ivor Brown's play William's Other Anne, she played Shakespeare's first girlfriend Anne Whateley opposite John Gregson as Shakespeare. She also made a number of well-regarded appearances in British films of the period, most notably her powerful performance as a French Resistance agent in Anthony Asquith's 1958 wartime espionage drama Orders to Kill, which earned her the BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actress. In 1962, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre, and it was there that she gave some of her great performances. She was Goneril to Paul Scofield's Lear in Peter Brook's acclaimed King Lear, the first of many collaborations with Brook. She recreated her implacable Goneril in the stark, black-and-white film version of this p

Did You Know?

• Worth won the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress for the 1958 film Orders to Kill.
• She was a three-time Tony Award winner, winning for Tiny Alice (1965), Sweet Bird of Youth (1976), and Lost in Yonkers (1991).
• In 1953, she performed at the inaugural season of the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, where she was an acclaimed Hedda Gabler.
• One of her later stage performances was opposite Paul Scofield in the 2001 production of I Take Your Hand in Mine at the Almeida Theatre.