Colleen Dewhurst

Colleen Rose Dewhurst (June 3, 1924 – August 22, 1991) was a Canadian-American actress known most for theatre roles, and for a while as "the Queen of Off-Broadway." In her autobiography, Dewhurst wrote: "I had moved so quickly from one Off-Broadway production to the next that I was known, at one point, as the 'Queen of Off-Broadway'. This title was not due to my brilliance but rather because most of the plays I was in closed after a run of anywhere from one night to two weeks. I would then move immediately into another." She was a renowned interpreter of the works of Eugene O’Neill on the stage, and her career also encompassed film, early dramas on live television, and Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival. One of her last roles was playing Marilla Cuthbert in the Kevin Sullivan television adaptations of the Anne of Green Gables series and her reprisal of the role in the subsequent TV series Road to Avonlea (marketed as Avonlea in the US).

Early life

Dewhurst was born in Montreal, Quebec, the only child of Ferdinand Augustus "Fred" Dewhurst, owner of a chain of confectionery stores, and his wife, Frances Marie (née Woods) Dewhurst, a housewife, whose father had been a "well-known athlete in Canada, where he had played football with the Ottawa Rough Riders". The family became naturalized as U.S. citizens before 1940. Colleen's mother was a Christian Scientist, a faith Colleen also embraced.