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 success, winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and several British and European awards. Ashcroft was born in Croydon, Surrey, the younger child and only daughter of William Worsley Ashcroft (1878–1918), a land agent, and his wife, Violetta Maud, "née" Bernheim (1874–1926). The biographer Michael Billington writes that Violetta Ashcroft was of Danish and German-Jewish descent and a keen amateur actress. Ashcroft's father was killed on active service in the First World War. She attended Woodford School, East Croydon, where one of her teachers encouraged her love of Shakespeare, but neither her teachers nor her mother approved of her