Glynis Johns - Britain's oldest living star of stage and screen is still shining
15.05.2023 - 01:23
/ msn.com
Glynis Johns has been a bikini-clad pin-up, a famous character actor, an Oscar nominee, and a Bafta award winner. The British actress has appeared in countless films - being perhaps best-remembered for starring in Mary Poppins - alongside everyone from David Niven to Sandra Bullock, and later in much-loved TV shows like Batman, Scooby Doo, and Cheers. What's most remarkable is that her stage debut as a baby occurred 100 years ago this autumn - which means she is fast approaching her centenary.
And, since the deaths in recent years of Zsa Zsa Gabor and Olivia de Havilland, she's acceded to the unofficial role of the world's oldest-living screen star. READ MORE: Holly Willoughby breaks social media silence as This Morning future is confirmedAmong other accolades, in 1960, she was Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting Actress in the Australian outback drama The Sundowners, starring Robert Mitchum, Deborah Kerr and Peter Ustinov. Now there are growing calls for her incredible career and longevity to be marked with a Damehood.
As her grandson Thomas Forwood told the Daily Express: "Glynis had simply the most extraordinary career. It would be fitting to mark that formally. "The actress and dancer, now retired, lives in a residential care home in Beverly Hills, California, and stopped giving interviews when she reached her nineties - but she has a raft of fans who are happy to sing her praises.
Among them is Labour MP Chris Bryant, who has held the shadow brief for both Arts and Culture and Media and Sport. He summed up her decades in film and TV, saying: "What a star Glynis Johns is - a lifetime ambassador for the creative arts in the UK and particularly Wales. "Mr Bryant, whose Rhondda constituency is close to Pembroke, where
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