Cathleen Nesbitt

British actress Cathleen Nesbitt took the first step toward a career that would span nine decades when she made her stage debut in the 1910 London revival of Pinero's The Cabinet Minister. While appearing with the Irish Players, Nesbitt made her first journey to America in 1915, where she would star in the Broadway premiere of Playboy of the Western World. After four years in the U.S., Nesbitt returned to England in 1919, where she concentrated on classic roles and where she would make her first film in 1922. Hundreds of stage roles later, Ms. Nesbitt appeared in her first American movie, 1954's Three Coins in the Fountain. Two years later, she played Mrs. Higgins in the Broadway hit My Fair Lady. When she accepted a co-starring role as William Windom's mother in the 1963 TV sitcom The Farmer's Daughter, some observers opined that this would be the capper of her long career. Not so: Cathleen Nesbitt had over 15 years of work still in her, including the demanding role of an octogenarian drug addict in The French Connection II. And in 1981, at the age of 92, Ms. Nesbitt again portrayed Mrs. Higgins in the Broadway revival of My Fair Lady. Cathleen Nesbitt wrote her autobiography, A Little Love and Good Company, in 1973.

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide