British actress Joan Plowright has died

Actress Joan Plowright died Thursday at the age of 95, her family announced.

“It is with great sadness that the family of Dame Joan Plowright inform you that she passed away peacefully on 16 January 2025 surrounded by her family at Denville Hall, England,” her family said in a statement Friday.

Along with Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, Ms Plowright is one of a trio of legendary English theatre and screen actors. On stage, she has played the greatest roles in repertoire and West End creations, including alongside her husband, Sir Laurence Olivier.

In film, she is known for her roles in Dennis the Menace, The Entertainer, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Tea with Mussolini, and as a haughty woman in Enchanted April, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 1993. That year, she starred in the HBO television film Stalin, in which she played Joseph Stalin’s mother-in-law. She then starred as Mrs. Fairfax in Jane Eyre (1996).

She had a long and illustrious career in theatre, film and television spanning seven decades until blindness forced her to retire in 2014. Ironically, Plowright leaves us far from the spotlight, on the same day that filmmaker David Lynch died.