Biografie van de Engelstalige Wikipedia:
Hermione Baddeley (13 November 1906 – 19 August 1986) was an English character actress of theatre, film and television. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Room at the Top (1959) and a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore in 1963.
Eary life
Originally Hermione Youlanda Ruby Clinton-Baddeley, she was born in Broseley, Shropshire, England. A descendant of British American Revolutionary War general Sir Henry Clinton, she and her older sister (the actress Angela Baddeley of Upstairs, Downstairs fame) moved in elevated social circles, Hermione's first husband being the Hon. David Pax Tennant, an elder brother of Stephen Tennant.
Career
Baddeley was known for standout supporting performances in such films as Mary Poppins (as Ellen, the maidservant), The Belles of St Trinian's, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Passport to Pimlico, The Pickwick Papers, Tom Brown's Schooldays and A Christmas Carol, although she first began making films back in the 1920s. She was a principal character in Brighton Rock (1947). She had a successful professional relationship with Sir Noel Coward, appearing in many of his plays throughout the 1940s and 1950s. The most successful was her teaming with fellow namesake Hermione Gingold in Coward's comedy Fallen Angels .
She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Simone Signoret's best friend, music teacher Elspeth, in Jack Clayton's Room at the Top (1959). With under three minutes of screen time, hers is the shortest role to be nominated for an Academy Award. In 1963, she was nominated for Broadway's Tony Award as Best Actress (Dramatic) for The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore.
Her television roles brought her increased visibility; besides many guest appearances on series such as Danger Man, she became known to American TV audiences for her roles in Little House on the Prairie and Maude (where she played the hard-drinking and compulsively lying housekeeper, Mrs. Nell Naugatuck). Like fellow Mary Poppins maid Reta Shaw, she appeared on the show Bewitched, as Samantha's beloved childhood nanny. Toward the end of her career, Baddeley was also a sought-after voice-over actress (The Aristocats, The Secret of NIMH).
Death
Hermione Baddeley continued to work sporadically on episodic television and feature films, until shortly before her death at 79, after complications from strokes, on Tuesday, August 19, 1986, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, in Los Angeles, California. Twice married, she was survived by her two children, Pauline and Anthony. Baddeley was interred in the grave of her ex husband David Tennant at Wilsford churchyard near Amesbury, Wiltshire, England.
