Annie Ellen Russell was born in Liverpool, England, the eldest child of Joseph and Jane (Mount) Russell. Her mother was English, her father Irish, a Dublin University man and a civil engineer. When she was five, her parents took her from a Dublin convent and brought her, with her brother and sister, to Montreal.
Mrs. Russell put her on the stage in 1872, her first role being Jeanne in the production by Rose Eytinge of Miss Moulton at the Montreal Academy of Music. On May 12, 1879, at the Lyceum Theatre, she made her New York debut in H. M. S. Pinafore as a member of the chorus of Haverly's Juvenile Pinafore Company, afterwards assuming the part of Josephine. Other child's roles followed--a boy in Rip Van Winkle, Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Then, with her brother Tommy (who was later to appear with their sister Marion in East Lynne and to star as Little Lord Fauntleroy), she joined E. A. McDowell's Repertoire Company and toured South America and the West Indies, playing a variety of parts from boys to old women.
Back in New York after seven months, she appeared at the Madison Square Theatre, October 29, 1881, in the title role of Esmeralda by William Gillette and Frances Hodgson Burnett. This established her on the stage. Although Gillette had turned her down as too young the first time she applied for the part, she scored a big hit in it and played it almost 900 times.
After acting in several plays under John Stetson's management and starring in Hazel Kirke, she returned in 1885 to the Madison Square Theatre, now under Albert M. Palmer, and created there many important roles, including Lady Vavir in W. S. Gilbert's Broken Hearts (Feb. 12, 1885), Maggie McFarlane in his Engaged (Feb. 23, 1886), Elaine in a dramatization of Tennyson's poem by George P. Lathrop and Harry Edwards (Apr. 28, 1887), probably her favorite part, and Mabel Seabrook in Haddon Chambers's Captain Swift (Dec. 4, 1888).
In 1889, while appearing in the Chambers melodrama, she was taken seriously ill, and two years later she went to Italy, on the proceeds of a benefit given for her at Palmer's Theatre, to study and regain her health. At this same theatre, on November 12, 1894, she resumed acting, playing Margery Sylvester in Sydney Grundy's The New Woman. In 1895 she joined Nat (Nathaniel C. ) Goodwin as his leading lady and supported him in three productions. On September 16, 1896, under the management of Charles Frohman, she made a hit at Hoyt's Theatre, New York, as Sue in the play of that name by Bret Harte and T. E. Pemberton.
In the spring of 1898 she was presented by Frohman to London audiences at the Garrick Theatre in Sue and as Rose Primrose in the one-act Dangerfield '95. Her success was so great that she was compared, in the extreme naturalness of her acting, to Duse; her art was described by Clement Scott as "that of Corot and Millet, a vaporyish, poetical, beautiful thing. "
She returned to America in the fall of 1898, having more than regained the reputation she had lost by her long illness, and from this time until her retirement her popularity never waned. Her last appearance on the professional stage took place at the Belasco Theatre, Washington, D. C. , on January 19, 1918, the role being Madame La Grange in Bayard Veiller's thriller, The Thirteenth Chair.
In 1932 she emerged from retirement at St. Petersburg, Fla. , to become director of the Annie Russell Theatre, which her friend and patron, Mrs. Edward Bok of Philadelphia, had built for her at Rollins College, Winter Park, Fla. There, as professor of theatre arts, she trained students for the stage, put on plays and concerts, and reappeared briefly in two of her old roles--the Queen in Browning's poetic drama In a Balcony (March 29, 1932) and Madame La Grange (March 2, 1933). She died of pneumonia in Winter Park after a long illness and was buried in Short Hills, N. J.
Annie Russell was loved for that elusive quality which for want of a more exact word we call charm. With this went both simplicity and naturalness, qualities always present in her acting but greatly strengthened by her period of convalescence and study in Italy. Although she appeared in emotional parts and a wide range of comic characters--her elfish Puck, her warm, wistful Beatrice, her Lydia Languish, and her Lady Teazle being among the best--her fame was based on her interpretation of Esmeralda and other young girls, known, to her distaste, as "Annie Russell parts. " However tired she may have become of the many rustic maids and white muslin girls she impersonated, her admirers always considered her the perfect ingenue, and this despite the fact that with her pinched face and long upper lip she was not pretty. Moreover, she created a distinct type of ingenue--"frosty, sagacious, piquant". Among her hits should be mentioned the title role in Shaw's Major Barbara, a part she created under the author's direction at the Court Theatre, London, November 28, 1905, and Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, a memorable revival that opened the New Astor Theatre in New York, September 21, 1906.
Annie was twice married. On November 2, 1884, she married Eugene W. Presbrey, Palmer's stage manager. After twelve years she divorced him and in 1904 married Oswald Yorke, an English actor, who survived her. There were no children.
