Oscar Profile #69: Rachel Roberts

Born September 20, 1927 in Wales, Rachel Roberts had a strict Baptist upbringing against which she rebelled. Following her studies at the University of Wales and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she had a successful career on the London stage and entered films in 1953. Her screen career, however, did not take off until Karel Reisz’s 1960 film, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in which she played Albert Finney’s older, married lover. The performance won her a BAFTA for Best British Actress, an accomplishment she repeated three years later with a second win for Lindsay Anderson’s This Sporting Life in which she played Richard Harris’ older lover.

Married to actor Alan Dobie, five years her junior, from 1955 to 1961, she became the fourth wife of actor Rex Harrison in 1962 three years after the death of his third wife, actress Kay Kendall.

On the British stage in the hit musical Maggie May in 1964, she was seen mostly on TV for the remainder of the decade with an occasional foray into film. It wasn’t, however, until
Lindsay Anderson’s 1973 film, O Lucky Man! opposite Malcolm McDowell that she had another screen role of major importance.

Her delightful portrayal of Wendy Hiller’s maid in Sidney Lumet’s 1974 film of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express brought her some of her best notices.

Depressed since her divorce from Harrison in 1971, she moved to Los Angeles in 1975 where she tried to forget him. Unable to do so, she made a thwarted attempt to win him back in 1980 by which time he was already married to his sixth and final wife.

It was during this period that she made three of her most memorable late career films, Peter Weir’s Australian suspense film, Picnic at Hanging Rock; Colin Higgins’ Hollywood comedy, Foul Play and John Schlesinger’s British drama, Yanks.

Still suffering from depression, on Thanksgiving Eve, 1980, after carefully documenting her procedure in her diary, Roberts took an overdose of sleeping pills intending to kill herself. When she awoke the following morning to find herself still alive, she went into her garden and swallowed lye and other chemicals which did the trick. Her death was so violent that she was propelled between a stained glass door separating two rooms in her home. She was found on her kitchen floor cut to ribbons. She was only 53 years old.

Her good friend, actress Jill Bennett, also suffering from lifelong depression, committed suicide in 1990 at the age of 58. Director Lindsay Anderson scattered the ashes of both actresses over the River Thames in 1992 while singer/songwriter Alan Price sang the sardonic “Is That All There Is?”, which is included in a segment of a documentary Anderson, who himself died in 1994, made for the BBC.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING (1960), directed by Karel Reisz

One of the seminal films of the “British New Wave” of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Roberts’ shattering portrayal of Albert Finney’s discarded older married lover earned her a much deserved Bafta for Best British Actress. One of the first major films to deal with abortion, which was a successful procedure in the novel, the film’s ending is changed to indicate the procedure didn’t take and the child, which was Finney’s, is then raised by Roberts’ husband in the film .

THIS SPORTING LIFE (1963), directed by Lindsay Anderson

Another discarded lover of another younger man, this time it’s rugby player Richard Harris, in another seminal film of the British New Wave. This time, however, she not only won another Bafta, she also received her first and only Oscar nomination. Harris was also nominated for his first major screen role. Roberts’ new husband, Rex Harrison, was also nominated that year for Cleopatra. Elizabeth Rees, Richard Harris’ first wife and mother of his three children, would later become Rex Harrison’s fifth wife.

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK (1975), directed by Peter Weir

Roberts had the starring role of the science teacher who disappears, along with three of her students, in Weir’s eerie masterpiece set in 1900 Australia. The film is such a harrowing depiction of a mystery which is never solved that audiences tend to think the film is based on real events. It is not.

FOUL PLAY (1978), directed by Colin Higgins

Higgins, writer of the cult classic Harold and Maude made his directorial debut with this modern screwball comedy from his own screenplay. Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase are the stars of the film about a plot to assassinate the Pope who is coming to San Francisco to see The Mikado. Marvelous Burgesss Meredith, Dudley Moore and Roberts hilariously figure into the plot.

YANKS (1979), directed by John Schlesinger

Schlesinger’s wartime romance set during the World War II American occupation of England features Richard Gere in one of his most sympathetic performances as a G.I. cook in love with local girl Lisa Eichhorn to the consternation of her bitter mum, played by Roberts in her third Bafta award-winning performance. Roberts is so good in this role, evoking the memory of Gladys Cooper who might have played the part in an earlier day. Just when you thought Roberts might become the new Cooper, she was gone, a victim of her own hand less than a year later.