Worth, Irene (1916—)

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Worth, Irene (1916—)

American actress and creative director. Born in Nebraska on June 23, 1916; University of California at Los Angeles, B.Edn., 1937; studied for the stage in London under Elsie Fogarty, 1944–45.

Born on June 23, 1916, in Nebraska, Irene Worth took to music as a child, studying piano and cello. After graduating from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1937, she worked as a schoolteacher until 1942, when at age 26 she made her first appearance on stage, touring with Elizabeth Bergner in the play Escape Me Never. Later that year, Worth made her first appearance on Broadway in The Two Mrs. Carrolls at the Booth Theater. She then traveled to London where she studied acting with Elsie Fogerty . In February 1946, Worth made her London debut playing Elsie in The Time of Your Life at the Lyric Theater in Hammersmith. Remaining in Britain for over three years, she played a variety of parts in different productions, including that of Cella Copplestone in T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party, a role which she created. After six months back in New York in 1950, she returned to London.

Touring with various productions in the following years, Worth visited many countries including Germany and South Africa. She joined the Old Vic Company in October 1951, appearing at the Berlin Festival as Desdemona in Othello. She repeated her performance upon her return to London and earned praise from Audrey Williamson : "The girl who could flout convention and choose love not colour, who 'saw Othello's visage in his mind,' and concentrated all the spiritual and physical warmth and intensity of her nature on this one figure who held her tenderness, respect and imagination, became at last fully alive on the stage." Worth continued her Shakespearean performances as Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream with the Old Vic that season. She also played Catherine de Vausselles in The Other Heart. With the same company in South Africa, she continued in these two roles and added Lady Macbeth to her Shakespearean repertoire. Back in London, she played Portia in The Merchant of Venice, a performance for which she received mixed reviews from the critics.

In 1953, after two highly successful years with the Old Vic, she collaborated with Tyrone Guthrie and Alec Guinness in founding the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada. This marked the starting point for one of the most interesting experiments in the North American theater, influencing production techniques everywhere by its abandonment of the proscenium arch and consistent use of an open, uncurtained stage. In addition to her role in Stratford as an organizer, Worth acted as well, performing Helena in All's Well that Ends Well and Queen Margaret in Henry VI.

The next years brought travel between London and New York and a 1958 appearance in the Edinburgh Festival. She returned to Stratford again in 1959, performing Rosalind in As You Like It. While in England in 1962, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company to play the Marquise de Merteuil in The Art of Seduction (Les liaisons dangereuses). In 1964, playing the role of Alice in Edward Albee's Tiny Alice, Worth received the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award. The next year she received the Evening Standard Award for Best Actress for her work in Noel Coward's Suite in Three Keys.

A British Council tour in 1966 brought her to South America and various universities in the United States. In 1967, Worth performed at Yale University in Prometheus Unbound. Three years later, she returned again to Stratford, where she was critically acclaimed for her work in the starring role in Hedda Gabler. In 1974, she played Mrs. Alving in Greenwich Theater's Ghosts. She had already perfected her interpretation of this possessive, anguished mother at Stratford, an interpretation regarded as one of her greatest triumphs. Worth effectively conveyed the double guilt felt by Ibsen's heroine at her failure to live her own life satisfactorily and her terror at having transmitted the unmentionable disease of syphilis to her adored son Oswald. Her ability to dominate the stage had earlier been evident when she played Queen Margaret in Shakespeare's Henry VI.

Although she worked less in the cinema that many other actresses of her generation, Worth won the British Film Academy Award for her performance as Leonie in 1958's Orders to Kill, a drama set in occupied France in 1944. She has also had a distinguished career as a television actress and received awards for her performance in "The Lady from the Lake" and "The Lady from the Sea" in 1954. She has played all the great classic roles, and her fame in her native United States was recognized by the Obie Award for Sustained Achievement in the Theater in 1989. She received the Order of the British Empire as well.