Jessica Tandy

Jessica Tandy (born June 7, 1909, London, Eng.—died Sept. 11, 1994, Easton, Conn., U.S.) was an English-born American actress of stage, screen, and television, noted for her complex portrayals and frequent collaborations with Hume Cronyn, her husband.

Tandy was the daughter of a traveling salesman and grew up in London, where she studied acting at the Ben Greet Academy. She first appeared in London in The Rumour (1929) and in New York City in The Matriarch (1930). After playing dozens of increasingly complex roles, she received critical acclaim for her creation of Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), for which she received a Tony Award in 1948. Her film appearances were varied and included The Desert Fox (1951), The Birds (1963), and Butley (1973). Tandy was first married to the British actor Jack Hawkins, whom she divorced in 1940. She married Hume Cronyn on Sept. 27, 1942, and became an American citizen in 1954.

Tandy appeared with Cronyn on the stage in The Fourposter (1951), Madame, Will You Walk (1953), The Honeys (1955), A Day by the Sea (1955), The Man in the Dog Suit (1958), The Physicists (1964), A Delicate Balance (1966), and Noel Coward in Two Keys (1974). Their stage partnership culminated in The Gin Game (1977) and Foxfire (1982), each of which yielded Tandy another Tony Award. Tandy and Cronyn, who were known as the “first couple of the American theatre,” received the first-ever Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 1994.

Tandy and Cronyn also performed together on radio and television, and their film work included The Seventh Cross (1944), The Green Years (1946), The World According to Garp (1982), Cocoon (1985) and its sequel Cocoon: The Return (1988), and Batteries Not Included (1987). Tandy earned an Academy Award for best actress for her performance in Driving Miss Daisy (1989). At age 80, she was the oldest person to win an Oscar. Although diagnosed with cancer in 1990, she continued to appear to great acclaim in films such as Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Used People (1992), and Nobody’s Fool (1994). For their contributions to the arts, Tandy and Hume received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1986.