Irene Vanbrugh

Dame Irene Boucicault DBE (2 December 1872 – 30 November 1949), née Barnes, known professionally as Irene Vanbrugh was an English actress. The daughter of a clergyman, Vanbrugh followed her elder sister Violet into the theatrical profession and sustained a career for more than 50 years. After appearing in supporting roles with J. L. Toole, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, George Alexander and others, she graduated to leading roles in the 1890s, creating such roles as Gwendolyn in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), and establishing her reputation in Arthur Pinero's The Gay Lord Quex (1899). In her early days as a leading lady she was particularly associated with Pinero's plays and later had parts written for her by James Barrie, Bernard Shaw, Somerset Maugham, A. A. Milne and Noël Coward. More famous for comic than for dramatic roles, Vanbrugh nevertheless played many of the latter both in modern works and in the classics. Her stage début was in Shakespeare, but she seldom acted in his plays later in her career; exceptions were her Queen Gertrude in Hamlet in 1931 and her Meg Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor, opposite her sister Violet as Alice Ford, in 1934. Best known as a stage performer, Vanbrugh appeared in three silent films in the 1910s but did not return to the cinema until the mid-1930s; she made ten films over the following decade. She appeared frequently in fundraising shows for various charities, and was active over many years in the support of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, of which her brother Kenneth was principal. After her death the academy's new theatre was named the Vanbrugh Theatre in honour of her and her sister.