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 (1960), The Duchess of Malfi (1961), Emilia in "Othello" (1961) and Ranevskaya in "The Cherry Orchard", opposite Gielgud as Gaev. These were generally well reviewed, but her performance in "The Wars of the Roses" in 1963 and 1964 had the critics searching for superlatives. The production was a reshaping of Shakespeare's three "Henry VI" plays and "Richard III". Ashcroft, then aged fifty-six, played Margaret of Anjou, ageing from blithe youth to ferocious old age as the plays progressed. The critic Philip Hope-Wallace wrote of: At about this time Ashcroft's third and last marriage was beginning to fall apart. According to