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 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