(5 July 1936 - 22 April 2020)
The American actress Shirley Knight, who has died aged 83, was a rare performer who brought something extra to any role she played. She graced the stage, films and television with equal sensitivity in a career that lasted over sixty-five years. In her time, she won a Tony, a Golden Globe, three Primetime Emmys and was nominated for two Academy Awards. Like Marlon Brando and James Dean, she was an actor’s actor which may have stemmed from her being a member of the Actors Studio. Born in Kansas, she graduated from Wichita State University, studied at the Pasadena Theatre School and then later with Jeff Corey, Erwin Piscator, Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen at Herbert Berghof’s HB Studio. Her stage career took in productions on and off-Broadway and Chicago.
Her first film part was a minor role in Picnic with William Holden in 1955. She went on to appear in Ice Palace with Richard Burton and was then nominated for an Oscar as Reenie Flood in Delbert Mann’s The Dark at the Top of the Stairs with Robert Preston. Another Academy Award nomination was forthcoming for her part in Richard Brooks’ Sweet Bird of Youth with Paul Newman. The Group was Sidney Lumet’s epic film of the Mary McCarthy novel about a bunch of female college graduates in the 1930s. It was a starry cast that included many young actresses setting out on the road to success, including Jessica Walter, Joanna Pettet, Joan Hackett, Elizabeth Hartman, Candice Bergen and Kathleen Widdoes. Often cast in independent productions, Knight was excellent in Anthony Harvey’s British film of Dutchman, about a white woman and a black man meeting on the New York subway. Knight’s performance won her the Volpi Cup for best actress at the 1967 Venice Film Festival.
Other films for Shirley Knight included Michael Anderson’s Flight from Ashiya with Yul Brynner, Richard Lester’s Petulia with Julie Christie, and also his Juggernaut with Richard Harris and an uncredited James Cameron-Wilson, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rain People with James Caan, Irwin Allen’s Beyond the Poseidon Adventure with Michael Caine, Franco Zeffirelli’s Endless Love with Brooke Shields, Richard Rush’s Colour of Night with Bruce Willis, Jeremiah Chechik’s Diabolique with Sharon Stone, Isabelle Adjani and Kathy Bates, James L. Brooks’ As Good As It Gets with Jack Nicholson, Steve Guttenberg’s P.S. Your Cat Is Dead, Callie Khouri’s Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood with Sandra Bullock and Ellen Burstyn, Steve Carr’s Paul Blart: Mall Cop and its sequel with Kevin James, Gary Lundgren’s Redwood Highway with Tom Skerritt, and Jason Winn’s Periphery with Rebecca De Mornay and Stacy Keach, Shirley Knight’s last film in 2018.
Throughout her career she appeared in multiple television series and TV movies, from Rawhide to Desperate Housewives. Shirley Knight married and divorced the producer (of Dutchman) Eugene Persson, who died in 2008. In 1969 she married the British writer and director John Hopkins, of Z-Cars and Smiley’s People fame. He died in 1998. Following her second marriage, she assumed the name of Shirley Knight Hopkins for a few years. Shirley Hopkins is the mother of the teacher Sophie Hopkins and the actress Kaitlin (formerly Persson) Hopkins.
MICHAEL DARVELL
