Becoming Cosmopolitan: Judith Anderson in Sydney, Australia, 1913–1918

Abstract

The Australian-born actress Judith Anderson was one of the twentieth century’s greatest international stars of stage and screen. She is probably best known as the brilliant character actress who made the cool, menacing housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 classic Rebecca one of the most memorable roles in film history. But she was considered, above all, as one of the world’s finest female actors on the legitimate stage from the 1930s to the 1950s, best known for her extraordinary performance of Medea. Her long career in theatre, film and television continued into her late eighties, when she played the Vulcan Priestess in Star Trek III and Minx Falconbridge in the American soap Santa Barbara. She died, by then Dame Judith Anderson, in 1992 at the age of 95.