
Film
SELECTED FILM CREDITS |
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Dream Horse | Dir: Euros Lyn | ||||
Summerland | Dir: Jessica Swale | ||||
Voyageuse | Dir: May Miles Thomas | ||||
Time and Again | Dir: Rachel Dax | ||||
A Christmas Carol | Dir: David and Jaqui Morris | ||||
Miss Dali | Dir: Ventura Pons | ||||
House Of America | Dir: Marc Evans | ||||
Alice Through The Looking Glass | Dir: John Henderson | ||||
My Old Lady | Dir: David Esjornson | ||||
The Borrowers | Dir: John Henderson | ||||
Heidi | Dir: M Rhodes | ||||
Beckett | Dir: Peter Glenville | ||||
Under Milk Wood | Dir: Herb Ross | ||||
Clash Of The Titans | Dir: Desmond Davis | ||||
The Doctor And The Devils | Dir: Freddie Frances | ||||
The Age Of Innocence | Dir: Martin Scorsese | ||||
Valmont | Dir: Milos Forman | ||||
Murphy's War | Dir: Peter Yates | ||||
Goodbye Mr Chips | Dir: Herb Ross | ||||
Dune | Dir: David Lynch | ||||
Ewoks II | Dir: Ken Wheat |
Theatre
RECENT THEATRE |
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Driving Miss Daisy |
Dir: Richard Beecham Theatre Royal Bath |
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Les Blancs |
Dir: Yael Farber National Theatre |
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Playing For Time |
Dir: Richard Beecham Sheffield Crucible Theatre |
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The Importance Of Being Earnest |
Dir: Lucy Bailey Harold Pinter Theatre, West End & UK Tour |
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The importance Of Being Earnest |
Dir: Keith Baxter Shakespeare Theatre, Washington |
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People |
Dir: Nicholas Hytner National Theatre / UK Tour |
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This Is My Family |
Dir: Daniel Evans Sheffield Crucible |
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Cabaret |
Dir: Rufus Morris Bill Kenwright Limited UK Tour/ Savoy |
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Little Dogs |
Dir. Steven Hoggett & Scott Graham National Theatre of Wales & Frantic Assembly Patti Pavilion, Swansea |
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Lovesong |
Dir: Steven Hoggett & Scott Graham Frantic Assembly, Uk Tour & Lyric Hammersmith |
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Bittersweet |
Dir: Michael Gieleta Bard Summerscape, New York |
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Juliet And Her Romeo |
Dir: Tom Morris Bristol Old Vic |
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Calendar Girls |
Dir: Hamish McColl Chichester, Tour & West End |
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Les Liaisons Dangereuses |
Dir: Rufus Norris American Airlines Theater, NY |
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Regrets Only |
Dir: Chris Ashley Manhattan Theatre Club |
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Quartet |
Dir: Jack Hofkiss Bay Street Theatre Sag Harbour NY |
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Rockaby |
Dir: Loveday Ingram Beckett Centenary Festival Barbican & The Gate |
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The Unexpected Man |
Dir: Deborah Bruce Theatre Royal Bath & Tour |
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Great Expectations |
Dir: Declan Donnelan Royal Shakespeare Company |
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Divas At The Donmar |
Dir: Thierry Harcourt Donmar Warehouse, London |
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Vagina Monologues |
Dir: Irina Brown Arts Theatre London |
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Marlene |
Dir: Sean Mathias Lyric, Shaftesbury Avenue, International Tour & Broadway |
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An Inspector Calls |
Dir: Stephen Daldry Royal Theatre, New York |
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Ghosts New Adaptation by Pam Gems |
Dir: Sean Mathias Royal National Theatre, London |
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Lettice & Lovage |
Dir: Loveday Ingram Theatre Royal National Tour |
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OTHER LONDON THEATRE CREDITS |
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Brel | Donmar Warehouse | |
Painting Churches | The Playhouse Theatre | |
The Manchurian Candidate | Lyric, Hammersmith | |
Vanilla | Lyric Theatre | |
Paris Match | Garrick Theatre | |
Hedda Gabler |
Duke of York Theatre & National Theatre Oslo |
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The Duchess of Malfi | RSC, Aldwych | |
Ondine | RSC, Aldwych | |
The Lizard On The Rock | Phoenix Theatre | |
Gentle Jack | Queen's Theatre | |
Maxibules | Queen's Theatre | |
The Night Of The Iguana | Savoy Theatre | |
Ride A Cock Horse | Piccadilly Theatre | |
Man And Superman |
Arts, Vaudeville & Garrick Theatres |
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Man Of Destiny | Mermaid Theatre | |
The Burglar | Vaudeville Theatre | |
Epitaph For George Dillon | Young Vic Theatre | |
A Nightingale In Bloomsbury Square | Hampstead Theatre | |
Siwan | Hampstead Theatre | |
The Gay Lord Quez | Aldbury Theatre | |
Spinechiller | Duke Of York's Theatre | |
You Never Can Tell | Lyric, Hammersmith | |
Dear Liar | Mermaid Theatre | |
Major Barbara | National Theatre | |
Pal Joey |
Half Moon & Albery Theatre |
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Peg Of My Heart | Phoenix Theatre | |
Gigi | Lyric Theatre | |
Thursday's Ladies | Apollo Theatre | |
A Little Night Music | National Theatre | |
THEATRE OUTSIDE LONDON |
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Twelfth Night | Viola | |
Candida | Candida | |
Taming Of The Shrew | Kate | |
St Joan | St Joan | |
Siwan | Siwan | |
The Glass Menagerie | Amanda | |
A Woman Of No Importance | Mrs Arbuthnotg | |
Lion In Winter | Eleanor | |
Othello | Desdamona | |
Hedda Gabler | Hedda Gabler | |
Uncle Vanya | Elena | |
Three Sisters | Masha | |
The Inconstant Couple | Countress | |
A Midsummer Night's Dream | Helena | |
A Midsummer Night's Dream | Titania | |
ALSO: In Welsh: | The Bear, The Proposal, Le Medecin Malgre Lui | |
ALSO: In French: | Huis Clos, Les Precieuses Ridicules |
TV
Keeping Faith (Series 3) |
Dir: Pip Broughton Vox Pictures |
Doctors |
Dir: Ed Dick BBC |
The Cuckoo's Calling |
Dir: Michael Keilor Bronté Film & Television |
Casualty |
Dir: Dafydd Llewelyn BBC |
Lewis: Wild Justice |
Dir: Hettie McDonald ITV |
New Tricks |
Dir: Stewart Svassand BBC |
Missing |
Dir: Ashley Pearce ITV |
Holby City |
Dir: Rob Evans BBC One |
Kitchen |
Dir: Kieron J Walsh CB Films Productions Ltd |
Midsomer Murders |
Dir: Peter Smith ITV |
La Femme Nikita |
Dir: Various US Television |
The Murder Room |
Dir: Diarmuid Lawrence US Television |
Aristocrats |
Dir: Michael Caffrey Madikell Prods |
Ivanhoe |
Dir: Stuart Orme BBC Television |
The Scold's Bridle |
Dir: David Thacker BBC Screen One |
A Mind To Kill |
Dir: Peter Edwards Lluniau Lliw Prods |
Nearest And Dearest | HTV |
The Garden of Lonliness | Granada |
The Achurch Letters | BBC |
Don Juan In Hell | Granada |
Shoulder to Shoulder | BBC |
I' Claudius | BBC |
Smiley's People | BBC |
Barriers (Series) | Tyne Tees |
The Carpathian Eagle | BBC |
How Many Miles To Babylon | BBC |
George Borrow | Welsh Language TV Film |
A Killing On The Exchange | Anglia |
Emlyn's Moon | HTV |
Platonov | BBC |
Out Of Time | Strongbow Films Ireland |
The Tortoise And The Hare | ATV |
Freddie And Max | Thames |
Hands Across The Sea | BBC |
Ways And Means | BBC |
Treason | BBC Wales |
Off To Philadelphia In The Morning | BBC Wales |
Heartbreak House | BBC |
The Quiet Man | Granada |
The Sex Games | Granada |
How Green Was My Valley | BBC |
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy | BBC |
Crime And Punishment | BBC |
Sean (Series) | RTE |
The Wilderness Years | BBC |
A Painful Case | Irish TV Film |
Siwan | BBC Wales |
Vanity Fair | BBC Classic Serial |
The Snow Spider | BBC |
Lady Windermere's Fan | BBC |
The Oresteia | BBC |
Home For Xmas | Anglia |
Perfect Scoundrels | TVS |
The Black Candle | Worldwide TV |
The Astonished Heart | BBC |
The Chestnut Soldier | HTV |
Summer Silence | TV Wales |
The Two Mrs Grenvilles (Mini Series) | Lorimar Productions |
Ballykissangel | RTE |
Radio
Miss Phillips has made countless radio broadcasts in major roles of a variety of plays, including: PERICLES, BEQUEST TO THE NATION, SKIRMISHES, ANTHONY AND CLEOPATRA, ALL’S WELL THAT END’S WELL, THE MAIDS, OEDIPUS REX, PHEDRE,etc.
Her many speaking book recordings include: THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, MEASURE FOR MEASURE, AN OMLETTE AND A GLASS OF WINE, THE CAMOMILE LAWN.
Her musical recordings include: PAL JOEY, GIGI, MARLENE, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC (two versions), AND SO IT GOES(to be released), BENITCHED(single).
Awards
New York Critics Award | Goodbye Mr Chips |
Critics Circle Award | Goodbye Mr Chips |
Royal Television Society Awards | I, Claudius |
BAFTA | I, Claudius |
BAFTA | How Green Was My Valley |
Lifetime Achievement Bafta - Wales | I, Claudius |
AWARD NOMINATIONS |
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BAFTA Scotland | Voyageuse | |
BAFTA Wales, Olivier Award, Tony Award | The Chestnut Soldier | |
Drama Desk Award | Marlene | |
Olivier Award | A Little Light Music | |
BAFTA | The Snow Spider | |
Welsh Artist Of The Year | Ghosts | |
Society of West End Theatre Award | Pal Joey | |
BAFTA | Shoulder To Shoulder | |
Society Of West End Theatre Award | Man And Superman | |
Society Of West End Theatre Award | Night Of The Iguana | |
BAFTA Wales | House Of America | |
Honorary Awards And Degrees |
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Miss Phillips is: | ||
Commander of the British Empire for her Services to Drama | ||
Honorary Fellow, Cardiff University | ||
Honorary Doctor of Literature, University of Wales | ||
Honorary Fellow, National Polytechnic of Wales | ||
Former Governor St David’s Trust | ||
Vice President Welsh College of Music and Drama | ||
Honorary Fellow University of Swansea | ||
Honorary Fellow, Welsh College of Music and Drama | ||
Member of the Gorsedd of Bards, Great Britain | ||
Five Years Arts Council Drama Committee | ||
Graduate (Hons) Cardiff University | ||
Honorary Fellow Trinity College Camarthen | ||
Former Governor Welsh College of Music and Drama (8 years) |










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Reviews
LES BLANCS
“And there are fine, alert contributions from…glorious Siân Phillips as the surviving spirit of the mission.” - Michael Coveney (www.whatsonstage.com)
PLAYING FOR TIME
“Fénelon is depicted by the outstanding Siân Phillips as a frail, fallible figure surrounded by the youthful women of her remembrance.
It’s hard to pay sufficient tribute to an actor in her 80s prepared to be so physically and psychologically abused. Nor does it matter that Phillips rasps through selections from Madam Butterfly practically in a baritone register, as Fénelon couldn’t sing Puccini properly either. And the tension in her throat suggests the effects of agonised complicity with the camp commanders, who commend the orchestra for “strengthening us in this difficult work of ours”. - Alfred Hickling (The Guardian)
“A superb production led by Sian Phillips’ devastatingly honest central performance. Magnificently melancholic as Fania, with her head shaven and looking all skin and bone, Sian Phillips gives a peerless portrayal of a woman looking back in wonder while still wrestling with the existential lunacy of collaboration through music, her formidable acting technique and sure theatrical instincts invisibly linking remembrance of horrors past with our own troubled times.
At the end, when Fania and two other survivors meet in a restaurant, her request to a waiter is for “something absolutely extraordinary”. But Phillips and the ensemble have already delivered it.” - Roger Foss (THE STAGE)
“Hard to overstate the impact, the sense of event, commemoration and bleak grandeur in this extraordinary evening. But add to that a central performance as Fania from Sian Phillips: eighty-one now, a war-baby with early memories of being taken outside at night to watch Swansea burning. We use some words too lightly in the arts, but Phillips’ wholly committed gently controlled performance is a marvel of fearlessness, sorrow and sincerity. It is one of those rare memorable nights when you come to believe you are not watching acting at all, but remembered experience: a necessary ritual. Sian Phillips is the powerful centre.” - Libby Purves (Theatre Cat)
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
“Phillips is one of the best Lady Bracknells I have ever seen; skirting caricature without embracing it, she encapsulates the low venality of the high born.” - Neil Norman (The Daily Express)
“Lady Bracknell, that gorgon of social propriety, is embodied by the redoubtable Sian Phillips, who is 81. She looks more glamorous than any Lady Bracknell has a right to, but any occasion to gaze upon Ms. Phillips’s bone structure is not to be discounted.” - Ben Brantley (New York Times)
“Phillips is one of the best Lady Bracknells I have ever seen; skirting caricature without embracing it, she encapsulates the low venality of the high born.”
- Neil Norman (Daily Express)
“Sian Phillips’s stately Lavinia apprehensively practices the line “A handbag?”. She has no need worry; she carries off the part of Lady Bracknell with imperious aplomb.” - Paul Taylor (The Independent)
“Siân Phillips is much more than that, capturing not only Lady Bracknell’s corseted hauteur but also her mercenary nature, as she avidly sizes up Cecily’s financial potential.” - Michel Billington (The Guardian)
“Siân Phillips as a vulture-like Lady Bracknell whose voice swoops and soars to tremendous effect.” - Charles Spencer (The Daily Telegraph)
“Phillips is, meanwhile, pure arsenic in old lace as Lady Bracknell and she delivers the play’s most celebrated line – “a handbag!” – with tremendous relish.”
- Tim Walker (Sunday Telegraph)
“Phillips admirably conveying the calculating little mind behind Lady Bracknell’s stentorian pronouncements.” - Sarah Hemming (Financial Times)
“Special mention has to be given to Sian Phillips who plays a fantastically spiky Lady Bracknell. In fact, Phillips is so brilliant at the role that you can imagine her in one of the original casts, except for when she breaks character to tell her husband to straighten up.” - Joanne Byrne (The Upcoming)
“Otherwise there’s plenty of mounting hysteria – Phillips is consummate at sewing in a more or less throwaway “handbag”, which we’ve seen Lavinia rehearse near the start, within a crescendo of growing horror at Jack’s railway-station narrative. Flawless.” - Tim Nice (The Arts Desk)
“Siân Phillips is an exquisite Lady Bracknell, the veteran performer on scintillating form as she delivers quotable line after quotable line of Wilde’s words to comic perfection.” - Matthew Amer (Official London Theatre)
PEOPLE
“Sian Phillips is superb as Dorothy Stacpoole. the impoverished elderly aristocrat and former model who has inherited a crumbling South Yorkshire pile, her lifelong home which she fears she’ll be forced to turn over to cagoule-wearing, camera-clutching hordes of National Trust day trippers. With her razor cheekbones, wasp waist and cool hauteur, Phillips is the epitome of dilapidated elegence.” - Sam Marlowe (The Times)
THIS IS MY FAMILY
“And Granny May, infinitely touching, is the great Sian Phillips.” - Libby Purves (The Times)
“Best of all is the venerable May, played by the peerless Siân Phillips, who combines religious conviction with erotic memories.” - Michael Billington (The Guardian)
CABARET
“Indeed the relationship between the old landlady, Fraulein Schneider, and her Jewish admirer Herr Schultz proves far more touching thanks to lovely autumnal performances from Sian Phillips and Linal Haf” - Charles Spencer (The Daily Telegraph)
“The show is still worth seeing for its bold imaginative sweep and for Sian Phillips’s deeply touching Fraulein Schneider” - Paul Taylor (The Independent)
“Siân Phillips is on typically scene-stealing form as Fräulein Schneider” - Tim Walker (The Sunday Telegraph)
LITTLE DOGS (National Theatre of Wales / Frantic Assembly)
“Good as everything and everyone else is, it is Phillips who commands the show – and this is the greatest strength of the conception of the piece. Her understated presence counterbalances the wild exuberances of the teenage characters that surround her. By reminding us that youth is a thing that does not last, she induces in us a Thomas-like compassion for this turbulence of teenage self-obsession.” - Clare Brennan (The Observer)
“Siân Phillips, whose grandmotherly figure presides over many of the scenes with a benign but saddened presence, gives a wonderfully strident monologue at the play’s finale.” - Dylan Moore (The Arts Desk)
“Quieter moments, back in that sitting room, or at a rain-soaked bus-stop, reveal the anxious, lonely reality beyond the displays of sexual bravado. Despite the hugely watchable Phillips appearing in these, and stealing the show in a jaw-dropping finale, there remains a nagging sense of disjunction between the two worlds” - Elisabeth Mahoney (The Guardian)
LOVESONG
“Phillips is mesmerising as a woman facing up to her inevitable demise.” - Karen Price (Western Mail)
“What this beautiful 90-minute show has in glorious quantities, though, is skill and richness in theatrical presentation; in the poetry of Morgan’s text, in the powerful use of video and sound, and above all in Siân Phillips’s stunning central performance as Maggie…” - Joyce McMillan (The Scotsman)
Stats
Literary Agent: Mark Lucas (Law Ltd)
Training: RADA (Bancroft Medal)
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Fair
Height: 5'8"
Publications |
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Private Places | Hodder and Stoughton, London |
Public Faces | Hodder and Stoughton, London |
SIAN PHILLIPS’ NEEDLEPOINT and general Journalism | Elm Tree Books |