Known For: Welsh actress (born 1933)
Category: Actresses
Country: United Kingdom
City: Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen
Date of Birth: Sunday, 14 May 1933
Language English
Dame Jane Elizabeth Ailwên Phillips, known professionally as Siân Phillips, is a Welsh actress. Her early career consisted primarily of stage roles, including the title roles in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan. In the 1960s, she started taking on more roles in television and film. She is particularly known for her performance as Livia in the 1976 BBC television series I, Claudius, for which she was awarded a BAFTA and a Royal Television Society award. She was nominated for a Tony Award and Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her performance as Marlene Dietrich in Marlene.
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Phillips was born on 14 May 1933 in Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen, the daughter of Sally (née Thomas), a teacher, and David Phillips, a steelworker who became a policeman. She is a Welsh-speaker: in the first volume of her autobiography Private Faces (1999) she notes that she spoke only Welsh for much of her childhood, learning English by listening to the radio. Phillips attended Pontardawe Grammar School and originally was known there as Jane, but her Welsh teacher called her Siân, the Welsh form of Jane. Later she took up English and philosophy at University College Cardiff. Phillips graduated from the University of Wales in 1955. She entered RADA with a scholarship in September 1955, the same year as Diana Rigg and Glenda Jackson. She won the 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 to work for an extended period of time in the United States, but she declined, preferring to work on stage.
