A Passage to India (film) Best Picture, Best Director for Lean, and Best Actress for Judy Davis for her portrayal as Adela Quested. Peggy Ashcroft won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal as Mrs Moore, making her, at 77, the oldest actress to win the award, and Maurice Jarre won his third Academy Award for Best Original Score. Adela Quested (Judy Davis) is sailing from England to British Raj India with Mrs Moore (Peggy Ashcroft), the latter the mother of her intended bridegroom, Ronny Heaslop (Nigel Havers); Mrs Moore's son from her first marriage. He is the Collector and the City
Peggy Ashcroft year she married Rupert Hart-Davis, then an aspiring actor, later a well-known publisher. He later described the marriage as "a sad failure: we were much too young to know what we wanted ... after much agony we parted and were duly divorced. Nowadays Peggy and I lunch together perhaps once or twice a year in a Soho restaurant and have a lovely nostalgic-romantic talk of shared memories of long ago. She is a lovely person and the best actress living." In 1930 Ashcroft was cast as Desdemona in a production of "Othello" at the Savoy Theatre, starring Paul Robeson in