LOS ANGELES: Jean Simmons, whose ethereal screen presence and starring roles with Hollywood’s top actors made her a mid-century film icon, has died at age 80.
The actress, who sang with Marlon Brando in “Guys and Dolls,” co-starred with Gregory Peck and played Ophelia to Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet, died Friday at her home in Santa Monica, her agent Judy Page told the Los Angeles Times. She had lung cancer.
Already a stunning beauty at 14, Simmons made her movie debut in the 1944 British production “Give Us the Moon.”
Several minor films followed before British director David Lean gave the London-born actress her breakthrough role of Estella, companion to the reclusive Miss Havisham in 1946’s “Great Expectations.”
That was followed by the exotic “Black Narcissus,” and then Olivier’s Oscar-winning “Hamlet” in 1948, for which Simmons was nominated as best supporting actress.
She would be nominated for another Oscar, for best actress for 1969’s “The Happy Ending,” before moving largely to television roles in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.
She won an Emmy Award for her role in the 1980s miniseries “The Thorn Birds.”
Her other notable films included “Elmer Gantry” (with Burt Lancaster), “Until They Sail” (with Newman), “The Big Country” (Peck), “Spartacus,” (Douglas), “This Earth Is Mine” (Rock Hudson), “All the Way Home” (Robert Preston), “Mister Buddwing” (James Garner) and “Rough Night in Jericho” (Dean Martin).
Simmons had left Britain for Hollywood in 1950, accompanied by her future husband Stewart Granger. There, they were befriended by reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes, who flew them to Tucson, Ariz., for a surprise wedding.
“When I returned from the honeymoon,” Simmons told a reporter in 1964, “I learned that Hughes owned me — he had bought me from (British producer) J. Arthur Rank like a piece of meat.”
