Constance Collier was an English stage and screen actress.
Background
Constance Collier was born on January 22, 1878 in Windsor, Berkshire, England. She was the daughter of the actor Cheetham Auguste Hardie and the actress Elezie Collier Hardie. Born while her mother was on tour, Collier grew up in the theater. She was only three years old when she made her debut on stage as the fairy Peaseblossom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. At six she played Cissy in Wilson Barrett's production of The Silver King by Henry Arthur Jones and Henry Herman.
Career
Endowed with peculiar beauty, a pleasing voice, and a gift for dancing, Collier in 1893 earned a place in the chorus of Lecocq's La Fille de Madame Angot at the Criterion Theatre. This performance was her first in London. Afterward George Edwardes, the promoter of musical comedies, engaged her as one of his Gaiety Girls. She took lessons from Edwardes in singing, dancing, fencing, and speaking, and quickly rose to the top in his company. Admiring patrons soon introduced her to luxury, and she became complacent. A beau's disparaging remark about Gaiety Girls, however, reawakened in Collier a latent ambition to distinguish herself in drama. She landed a part in Tommy Atkins, but provincial tours and modeling were her main sources of income for some time. In 1896 she rejoined Wilson Barrett at the Lyric Theatre, taking the role of Mercia in Barrett's The Sign of the Cross. Still dissatisfied, she took advantage of a chance meeting with the playwright Henry V. Esmond to win the role of Chiara in Esmond's One Summer Day. Her work with Esmond extended her circle of friends and professional associates, including the comedian and manager Charles Hawtrey, who gave her a small part in The Cuckoo. Her performance earned Collier a wider reputation and numerous offers. A major advance in Collier's career came in 1901 when she appeared as Pallas Athena in Steven Phillips' Ulysses. Although she herself was disappointed with her performance, it had established her in the leading English theater, His Majesty's, managed by Herbert Beerbohm Tree. She remained with Tree for seven years, during which time she gained a rich experience in Shakespearean productions. She won renown as Mistress Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Portia in Julius Caesar, Viola in Twelfth Night, and Cleopatra in a command performance of Antony and Cleopatra, given in Berlin before the Kaiser. In this same period she met Benoît-Constant Coquelin, the great French comedian, whom she later credited with teaching her all she knew about acting. He also introduced her to his close friend Sarah Bernhardt, whose performances forced Collier to recognize her own limits as an actress. By the time she played Nancy Sykes in an all-star production of Oliver Twist in 1912, she was as well established in the United States as in England. L'Estrange also won recognition before he died in 1918. From 1912 to 1927 Collier traveled between England and the United States to play various stage roles, including the Duchess de Surennes in W. Somerset Maugham's Our Betters, which gave her the longest continuous run (1923 - 1925) of her career. During this period she also made her film debut, in D. W. Griffith's Intolerance (1915). Earlier in the year she had produced John N. Raphael's dramatic version of George du Maurier's Peter Ibbetson. Collier moved permanently to the United States in 1927 and settled in Hollywood in 1929, when she signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. That same year she scored a stage triumph as the Countess Flor di Folio in S. N. Behrman's dramatization of Enid Bagnold's Serena Blandish. For the next decade and a half she appeared both in stage productions, including G. B. Stern's The Matriarch (1930) and Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman's Dinner at Eight (1932), and in films, including Thunder in the City (1937) and The Perils of Pauline (1947). Her final stage performance was in 1939 as Madame Bernardi in Aries Is Rising, and she concluded her motion-picture career with the horror film Whirlpool (1950). In her later years Collier spent an increasing portion of her time coaching such artists as Katharine Hepburn, Jennifer Jones, and Gene Tierney and lecturing. Collier died in New York City.
Achievements
Connections
Collier married the actor Julian L'Estrange in 1905.