Diane Cilento

Diane Cilento
Name	Diane Cilento
Birth date	5 October 1933
Birth place	Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Death date	6 October 2011
Death place	Cairns, Queensland, Australia
Occupation	Actress, author
Spouse	Andrea Volpe (m. 1956; div. 1960), Sean Connery (m. 1962; div. 1973), Anthony Shaffer (m. 1985; died 2001)
Children	2, including Jason Connery

Diane Cilento was an Australian actress and author whose career spanned theatre, film, and television across several decades. She gained international recognition for her work on the London stage and in major Hollywood productions, earning an Academy Award nomination for her supporting role in Tom Jones. Cilento was also known for her high-profile marriage to actor Sean Connery and her later life as a writer and retreat owner in Far North Queensland.

Early life and education

She was born in Brisbane to prominent physician and medical researcher Sir Raphael Cilento and journalist and army officer Phyllis Cilento. Her early education was at St. Margaret's Anglican Girls' School in Ascot. Showing an early interest in the performing arts, she later studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where she trained alongside many future stars of the British theatre.

Career

Her professional stage career began in the early 1950s with repertory companies in the United Kingdom, including the Oxford Playhouse. She made her West End debut and soon established herself as a formidable dramatic actress, performing in works by William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, and Tennessee Williams. Her breakthrough film role came in the British drama The Admirable Crichton. She achieved her greatest cinematic acclaim for her performance as Molly Seagrim in Tony Richardson's Best Picture winner Tom Jones, which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Other notable film appearances include The Agony and the Ecstasy opposite Charlton Heston and the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. In later years, she turned to writing, publishing an autobiography and a novel.

Personal life

Her personal life often attracted media attention, particularly her marriages. Her first marriage was to Italian hotelier Andrea Volpe. In 1962, she married Scottish actor Sean Connery, then rising to fame as James Bond; their son is actor-director Jason Connery. The couple lived in Spain and Greece before their divorce in 1973. In 1985, she married playwright Anthony Shaffer, author of Sleuth; they remained together until his death in 2001. In the 1970s, she purchased a property in the Daintree Rainforest near Cairns, which she developed into a spiritual retreat and health farm called "Karnak". She lived there for much of her later life until her death from cancer in 2011.

Filmography

A selection of her film work includes *The Angel Who Pawned Her Harp (1954), *The Admirable Crichton (1957), *The Naked Edge (1961), *I Thank a Fool (1962), *Tom Jones (1963), *The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), *Hombre (1967), *Negatives (1968), *The Wicker Man (1973), and *The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

Stage work

Her significant theatre credits encompass a wide range of classical and modern roles. She appeared in Shakespearean productions such as The Taming of the Shrew and Measure for Measure at the Royal Shakespeare Company. She starred in a notable Broadway production of Shaw's The Millionairess and received critical praise for her performance in Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana in the West End. Other prominent stage work includes performances in The Crucible and The Chalk Garden.

Awards and recognition

For her performance in Tom Jones, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and a Golden Globe Award. She won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the film The Boy Who Had Everything. In 2001, she was awarded the Centenary Medal for service to Australian society through the arts. Her contributions to Australian performing arts have been recognized in several biographical studies and documentaries about Australian cinema.

Category:Australian film actresses Category:Australian stage actresses Category:Australian writers