Judy Davis (1982). In 1984, she was cast as Adela Quested in David Lean's final film "A Passage to India", an adaptation of E. M. Forster's novel, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. The film became a critics' favourite, opening to tremendous praise worldwide and "Variety" praised Davis for having "the rare gift of being able to look very plain (as the role calls for) at one moment and uncommonly beautiful at another. Likewise, "The Washington Post" wrote, "With makeup the color of smudged ivory, her pallor enhanced by the off-white linens she wears, Davis is
Peggy Ashcroft Komisarjevsky. Among those impressed by Ashcroft's performance as Desdemona was John Gielgud, recently established as a West End star. He recalled, "When Peggy came on in the Senate scene it was as if all the lights in the theatre had suddenly gone up". In 1932 he was invited by the Oxford University Dramatic Society to try his hand at directing, in the society's production of "Romeo and Juliet". Ashcroft as Juliet and Edith Evans as the nurse won golden notices, although their director, already notorious for his innocent slips of the tongue, referred to them as "Two leading ladies, the