Rachel Roberts

Rachel Roberts - who was born on September 20th, 1927, in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, Wales - was an award-winning Welsh actress.  The youngest of two daughters born to Richard (a church minister) and Rachel Ann Roberts, she studied at the University of Wales and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, before beginning work with a repertory company in Swansea in 1950.  She made her film debut in the 1953 Welsh-set comedy, Valley of Song.  In 1955, Roberts married the actor Alan Dobie, but they divorced in 1960.  That same year (1960), she won a British Academy Film Award for her performance in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and in 1963 won a further BAFTA and an Oscar nomination for her role in This Sporting Life.  In 1961, Roberts married the English actor Rex Harrison in Genoa, Italy.  The marriage was tumultuous, with both partners engaging in excessive drinking, as well as engaging in public fights.  Harrison later left Roberts, and they divorced in 1971, with Harrison going on to marry Roberts's former best friend, the British socialite, Elizabeth Rees-Williams.  Devastated by her divorce from Harrison, Roberts moved to Hollywood in 1975 in an attempt to put the failed marriage behind her, subsequently appearing in supporting roles in several American films, such as Foul Play in 1978.  In 1976, she won a Drama Desk award for her performance in the Alan Bennett play, Habeas Corpus, and in 1979 she co-starred in the LWT production of Bennett's The Old Crowd.  Roberts's final British film was Yanks, directed by John Schlesinger, in 1979, for which she received a Supporting Actress BAFTA.  Roberts had become known within the entertainment industry for her eccentric behaviour, that seemed to stem from her alcoholism.  She had a habit of imitating a Welsh Corgi when intoxicated; and once, at a party thrown by the actor Richard Harris, she attacked the actor Robert Mitchum on all fours, chewing his trousers and champing on his bare skin, saying, "There, there".  In 1980, Roberts tried desperately to win back Harrison, but it was a hopeless case, as by this time he was married to his sixth and final wife, Mercia Tinker.  By 1980, Roberts was living on-and-off with a Mexican man twenty years her junior, Darren Ramirez, although the relationship was largely platonic as Roberts had become obsessed with winning back Harrison.  On November 26th, 1980, Roberts's body was found by her gardener - lying amongst shards of broken glass on her kitchen floor - at her home in Los Angeles.  Initially attributed to a heart attack, Roberts had in fact fallen through a decorative glass divide between two rooms, after swallowing a strong alkali, as well as barbiturates and alcohol, as detailed in her posthumously-published journals.  Roberts was cremated at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory, with her journals becoming the basis for No Bells on Sunday: The Memoirs of Rachel Roberts.  In 1992, Roberts's ashes - along with her friend, the actress Jill Bennett (who took her own life in 1990) - were scattered on the River Thames by director Lindsay Anderson during a boat trip.  The event was included in Anderson's BBC documentary film, Is That All There Is?  Rachel Roberts was 53 years old.