
She was more than Laurence Olivier's wife & widow.
Yes, Joan Plowright was married to Olivier for an extended period & yes, this part of her life should be mentioned. Olivier & Plowright were married, they appeared on stage a few times together & even in a movie together, they had a few kids together, & remained married until his death. But Plowright was a mother (obviously 😊), she had her own acting career, & she had a life entirely of her own before she met Olivier & after he died in 1989.
Joan Plowright was a stage actress, having started out in the theater. Her debut on stage came at the Croydon theater. She was a member of the English Stage Company, when they were at the Royal Court Theatre, & was with them when they moved to the Palace Theatre. It was actually in her work on stage that Plowright met Laurence Olivier & through him, she was able to become associated with the National Theatre. She also appeared on Broadway a time or two, receiving a Tony Award in 1961 for her role in A Taste of Honey. During her years on stage, Joan Plowright appeared in Anton Chekov's Uncle Vanya, The Seagull, & the Cherry Orchard; Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf; Arthur Miller's The Crucible; & William Shakespeare's Love's Labours Lost, Much Ado About Nothing, the Merchant of Venice, & The Taming of the Shrew. (Considering that she married one of the leading Shakespearean actors, is it really a surprise that Joan Plowright had a Shakespeare phase?)
Eventually, Joan Plowright moved from stage to film. She was in several things aimed towards children & teens - 101 Dalmatians (Disney's live action movie with Jeff Daniels & Natasha Richardson), Disney's Dinosaur, Dennis the Menace, & the film version of The Spiderwick Chronicles (which is based on Tony DiTerlizzi's book series). Then there are the literary films she did - The Scarlet Letter (based on Nathaniel Hawthorn's book), Jane Eyre (based on Charlotte Bronte's book), & Return of the Native (based on Thomas Hardy's book). She was also in Tea with Mussolini, Frankie & Hazel, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, Three Sisters (which is the movie Plowright & Olivier were in together), & the documentary Tea with the Dames, which also showcased Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, & Eileen Atkins.
The Plowright Theatre in Scunthorpe (the town where she attended school) is named in Joan Plowright's honor. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1970 New Year Honors & was promoted to Dame Commander of the British Empire in the 2004 New Year Honors.
Sadly, Plowright's vision steadily declined during the late 2000s & early 2010s, due to macular degeneration. In 2014, she officially announced her retirement from acting because she had become legally blind. (If you are interested in learning more about macular degeneration, the Quincy Public Library can hook you up with books. If you are someone who is having sight issues, there are services through the State Library that the Quincy Public Library can help connect you with, in addition the audiobooks that you are more than welcome to use & the library's outreach department's services.)
If you are interested in reading any the books & plays or watching any of the movies mentioned, the Quincy Public Library would be happy to help you get your hands on it.