Background
Virginia Maskell was born in Shepherd"s Bush, London.
Virginia Maskell was born in Shepherd"s Bush, London.
After the outbreak of World World War II, Maskell"s family were evacuated to South Africa. After the war she returned to London and entered a convent school, where she developed an interest in acting. After attending drama school, she starred in television parts mainly playing demure young women in action series such as The Buccaneers and The Adventures of Robin Hood.
She made a minor film debut for director Roy Boulting with Happy Is the Bride (1957), and then began switching between the theatre and the screen, her next major film being director Pat Jackson"s comedy.
She also made an impact on the stage, in The Catalyst, and in live television drama. She later starred in, and as Peter Sellers"s wife in.
Sellers was unconvinced she could manage a credible Welsh accent and asked for her dismissal, though it was suspected that his ulterior motive was to replace Maskell with Welsh born actress Siân Phillips. Maskell was also a poet and an artist.
Following the shooting of Interlude in the summer of 1967, she suffered a severe nervous breakdown and was hospitalized at Stoke Mandeville Hospital for six weeks.
Police searched woods 700 feet up in the Chiltern Hills after her car was found a mile from her home. Maskell had apparently wandered through the woods for hours before collapsing where the police eventually found her. She was taken to hospital and given emergency treatment for an overdose of barbiturates, and although doctors revived her, she died the following day.
""I love acting, but I also want to be alive.
Publicity is like a prison. If you"re not careful, you begin to live according to everyone"s idea of how you ought to live.
Ambition? To be a big, big star..on the stage.".
Quotations:
""I love acting, but I also want to be alive. Publicity is like a prison. If you"re not careful, you begin to live according to everyone"s idea of how you ought to live.
Ambition? To be a big, big star..on the stage.".