Don't Utter a Note

A Passage to India

BBC Play of the Month

Uncle Vanya

The Big Gamble

Hand in Hand

Jet Storm

Alive and Kicking

Shake Hands with the Devil

Smiley Gets a Gun

The Prince and the Showgirl

Bernard Shaw

The Weak and the Wicked

Melba

The Magic Box

The Lady with a Lamp

Gone to Earth

Stage Fright

The Forbidden Street

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby

Major Barbara

Tudor Rose

A Gentleman of Paris

Hindle Wakes

To What Red Hell

Dawn

Bleak House

Esmeralda

Macbeth

Dame Agnes Sybil Thorndike, Lady Casson (24 October 1882 – 9 June 1976) was an English actress whose stage career lasted from 1904 to 1969.
Trained in her youth as a concert pianist, Thorndike turned to the stage when a medical problem with her hands ruled out a musical career. She began her professional acting career with the company of the actor-manager Ben Greet, with whom she toured the US from 1904 to 1908. In Britain she played in old and new plays on tour and in the West End, often appearing with her husband, the actor and director Lewis Casson. She joined the Old Vic company during the First World War, and in the early 1920s George Bernard Shaw, impressed by seeing her in a tragedy, wrote Saint Joan with her in mind. She starred in it with great success. She became known as Britain's leading tragedienne, but also appeared frequently in comedy.
During the Second World War, Thorndike and her husband toured in Shakespeare productions, taking professional theatre to remote rural locations for the first time. Towards the end of the war she joined Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier for two seasons staged by the Old Vic company in the West End. After the war she and Casson made many overseas tours, playing in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. They also appeared on Broadway.
Thorndike was mainly known as a stage actress, but made several films from the 1920s to the 1960s, among them The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) and Uncle Vanya (1963), both with Olivier. She also broadcast from time to time on radio and television. Her last stage appearances were in 1969 at the theatre named in her honour, the Thorndike Theatre, Leatherhead.



Sybil Thorndike