Shirley Anne Field

Shirley Anne Field (born Shirley Broomfield; 27 June 1936 – 10 December 2023) was an English actress who performed on stage, film and television from 1955. She was most prominent during the British New Wave.

Quotes

• [Reported as being one of two "bachelor girls" (the other being Barbara Shelley) who is "wary of marriage"] I think a career makes you selfish when it's going well — probably too clinging when it isn't.
  • Interviewed by Shirley Lord for her column, as cited in the Evening Standard (London, 15 December 1960), p. 10

• There is more to my life than sex, money, fame and a few ­horrific people I have met once or twice. Certainly I've been in love, been loved and had some highly comic adventures. So has your typist and the girl who does your wife's hair and so have most of the sensible swinging girls of ­today I am trying to represent.
  • From comments made "[a]t the height of her fame", as cited in "Shirley Anne Field obituary", The Times (11 December 2023).
  • The quote is from a letter published in the Sunday Mirror, 22 December 1963, p. 27. The Guardian obituary of Field mistakenly claims it was published in the Daily Mirror.

• I suppose the thing I'm most sad about [...] is that in my thirties, when I was at my most photogenic and knew what I was doing, I didn't consolidate my career. That annoys me. I'd have liked to play one magical role in my thirties.
  • From an interview, as cited in "Field Renaissance", Telegraph Sunday magazine (10 November 1985), p. 43

• I began to entertain the other kids, but I don't think they always appreciated it — they thought I was a bit of a show off. I got a good training for being an actress though, because while the people at the children's home didn't approve of dancing — they were very strict Methodists and thought dancing involved too much physical contact — they did approve of drama, and they even used to raise money with end of term shows when visitors would come and see how well we were being looked after.
  • From an interview, as cited in "The Woman — Not the Girl", The Guardian (13 November 1985), p. 22

• I was so happy to be working with people I was comfortable with in The Royal Court crowd. It was such a relief after spending five years being hassled or groped by this star or that, to feel like I was appreciated. It was reassuring. As regards kitchen sink, I prefer to call them 'social realism' as I think it's a more accurate term.
  • From an interview, as cited in "Field of Dreams", Cinema Retro (September 2009), and reproduced on the Powell & Pressburger website.

• There was one Sister that I think got sacked because of me [...] There was a system in place at the home if you were very lonely you could take your mattress and sleep in Sister's bedroom.
  I was sleeping on the floor one night when she did something to me and I didn't like it, so much that I wet the bed in anger. As a result, she threw me into the bathroom and under a boiling hot geyser and I was screaming in pain. Another Sister came in and stopped it, wrapped me in a towel and sat me on her knee. Two weeks later, [the first] Sister was gone.
• [On her early modelling career] I hoped my mother would see the photographs and she'd find me and want me [...] That was my dream.
• [For her role in The Entertainer] I turned up to casting in a room crowded with young women, all looking the same except I was a bit younger. So I let the pony tail down, took the hoop out of my petticoat and read the lines in my best RP, as I'd been taught to do.
  Director Tony Richardson was dismissing me with a "Thank you dear" but he later told me that as I walked away, he'd noticed the scuff marks on my heels. It must have sparked a thought in his head because he called out, "Can you say the lines in a northern accent?" I was furious, and I yelled [in strong Lancastrian tones]: "I’ve spent five years bloody trying not to."
  • From an interview, as cited in "Everything but the kitchen sink: Actor Shirley Anne Field on a lifetime on screen, from Saturday Night And Sunday Morning to stage", The Herald (Glasgow, 18 June 2017)
  • Field's family home in the East End of London was bombed during the blitz. Too young to be evacuated at the age of five, Field was placed in an orphanage run by Methodist Sisters. Long out of contact with her mother, they were only reunited in the 1970s.