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Siân Phillips
Dame Jane Elizabeth Ailwên Phillips DBE (born 14 May 1933), known professionally as Siân Phillips, is a Welsh actress, author and singer.
Phillips was the daughter of Sally (née Thomas), a teacher, and David Phillips, a steelworker-turned-policeman. She is a Welsh-speaker and in the first volume of her autobiography, "Private Faces", she notes that she spoke only Welsh for much of her childhood, learning English by listening to the radio.
She attended Pontardawe Grammar School and later read English and Philosophy at University College Cardiff, graduating in 1955. She entered RADA in LOndon, England with a scholarship in September 1955, the same year as Diana Rigg and Glenda Jackson. She went on to win the prestigious Bancroft Gold Medal for Hedda Gabler and was offered work in Hollywood when she left RADA. While still a student she was offered three film contracts, entailing her to work for an extended period of time in the United States; but she declined, preferring to work on stage instead.
As actor
Richard Burton: Wild Genius
Apple Cider Vinegar
Alec Guinness: A Class Act
Siân Phillips at 90
Peter O'Toole: Along the Sky Road to Aqaba
Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends
National Theatre Live: Under Milk Wood
Dream Horse
A Christmas Carol
Summerland
Be Happy!
Time & Again
National Theatre Live: Les Blancs
Voyageuse
Miss Dalí
To Provide All People
Nureyev
Hochelaga, Land of Souls
Aberfan: The Green Hollow
Under Milk Wood
A Picture of London
Lovesong
The Mountain That Had To Be Painted
The 50 Greatest Television Dramas
The Murder Room
Stalin: Inside the Terror
Still: Here/Now
Check the Gate: Putting Beckett on Film
I, Claudius: A Television Epic
Come and Go