Peggy Ashcroft

Acting

Peggy Ashcroft

Born 1907-12-22 · Croydon, Surrey, England, UK

​Dame Edith Margaret Emily Ashcroft, DBE, (22 December 1907 - 14 June 1991) known professionally as Peggy Ashcroft, was an English actress whose career spanned more than sixty years. Born to a comfortable middle-class family, Ashcroft was determined from an early age to become an actress, despite parental opposition.

Acting credits

When the Wind Blows poster
7.5

With the help of government-issued pamphlets, an elderly British couple build a shelter and prepare for an impending nuclear attack, unaware that times and the nature of war have changed from their romantic memories of World War II.

When the Wind Blows

1986

The 39 Steps poster
7.3

Richard Hanney has a rude awakening when a glamorous female spy falls into his bed - with a knife in her back. Having a bit of trouble explaining it all to Scotland Yard, he heads for the hills of Scotland to try to clear his name by locating the spy ring known as The 39 Steps.

The 39 Steps

1935

A Passage to India poster
6.8

Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to marry a city magistrate, and an English educator.

A Passage to India

1984

The Nun's Story poster
7.2

After leaving a wealthy Belgian family to become a nun, Sister Luke struggles with her devotion to her vows during crisis, disappointment, and World War II.

The Nun's Story

1959

Sunday Bloody Sunday poster
6.5

Recently divorced career woman Alex Greville begins a romantic relationship with glamorous mod artist Bob Elkin, fully aware that he's also intimately involved with middle-aged doctor Daniel Hirsh. For both Alex and Daniel, the younger man represents a break with their repressive pasts, and though both know that Bob is seeing both of them, neither is willing to let go of the youth and vitality he brings to their otherwise stable lives.

Sunday Bloody Sunday

1971

Laurence Olivier: A Life poster
10.0

A multi-award winning biography covering the life and career of legendary screen and stage actor/director Laurence Olivier.

Laurence Olivier: A Life

1982

Madame Sousatzka poster
6.9

In London, eccentric piano instructor Madame Sousatzka takes on a new prize protégé, Manek, a teenage Bengali immigrant who displays incredible talent. Manek forms a close bond with his teacher, but soon discovers that she expects her pupils to become disciplined in all areas of life, and not just behind the piano. As he struggles to meet the challenges, Manek must also deal with his mother, who vies with his teacher for his attention.

Madame Sousatzka

1988

Joseph Andrews poster
5.1

Lady Booby alias 'Belle', the lively wife of the fat landed squire Sir Thomas Booby, has a lusty eye on the attractive, intelligent villager Joseph Andrews, a Latin pupil and protégé of parson Adams, and makes him their footman. Joseph's heart belongs to a country girl, foundling Fanny Goodwill, but his masters take him on a fashionable trip to Bath, where the spoiled society comes mainly to see and be seen, but drowns in the famous Roman baths. When the all but grieving lady finds Joseph's Christian virtue and true love resist her lusting passes just as well as the many ladies who fancy her footman, she fires the boy. He's found and nursed by an innkeeper's maid, which stirs lusts there, again besides his honorable conduct, but is found by the good parson.

Joseph Andrews

1977

Secret Ceremony poster
6.1

A penniless woman meets a strange girl who insists she is her long-lost mother and becomes enmeshed in a web of deception, and perhaps madness.

Secret Ceremony

1968

Murder by the Book poster
5.3

Agatha Christie’s agents propose that it’s time for her to publish the manuscript she wrote thirty-five years earlier, a novel in which she finally kills off her most famous creation. And it’s not an entirely sad occasion. “That wretched little man,” she says. “He’s always been so much trouble. How is it Miss Marple has never upset me at all, not ever?” That night, who should appear at her doorstep but the wretched little man himself, Hercule Poirot? The great fictional detective and his creator proceed to play a very Christie-like game of cat and mouse for the manuscript – and for their own lives.

Murder by the Book

1986

Edward & Mrs. Simpson poster
10.0

While still the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII meets the married American socialite, Wallis Simpson. Their relationship causes furor in the palace and in parliament, especially when King George V dies, Mrs. Simpson gets divorced, and King Edward announces his intentions to marry her.

Edward & Mrs. Simpson

1978

The Wars of the Roses poster
8.7

A 1965 BBC adaptation of William Shakespeare's first historical tetralogy (1 Henry VI, 2 Henry VI, 3 Henry VI and Richard III), which deals with the conflict between the House of Lancaster and the House of York over the throne of England, a conflict known as the Wars of the Roses. It was based on the 1963 theatre adaptation by John Barton, and directed by Peter Hall for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The Wars of the Roses

1965

She's Been Away poster
5.7

A woman who has been institutionalized for 60 years for the "crime" of not conforming to the 1920s image of what a proper young woman should be (in other words, she did what she wanted and didn't care what anyone else thought about it) is finally released to the custody of her family, consisting of her grand-nephew and his family. At first she keeps a self-imposed distance from the relatives, but she soon finds herself coming around to her nephew's wife, a free spirit who is under the thumb of her cold and controlling husband.

She's Been Away

1989

Little Eyolf poster
6.7

Alfred Allmers has spent his whole life writing a book on "responsibility," a luxury he can afford as a result of his marriage to the wealthy and beautiful Rita. However, much to Rita's annoyance, his attention isn't always undivided toward her, as Alfred shifts his focus between his book, their son Eyolf, and his half-sister Asta. As Allmers slowly feels trapped in an unfulfilling marriage, emotions and a painful past threaten to boil over into a terrible finale.

Little Eyolf

1982

Cream in My Coffee poster
6.2

Past and present intertwine: An elderly couple returns to the hotel where they became close when they were young and flashbacks to the earlier visit reveal the origins of both their pleasures and problems. Somewhere between the past and the present, Dennis Potter attempted to find "the shape of a life, of two lives..."

Cream in My Coffee

1980

Days in the Trees poster
NR

A frail old woman meets a middle-aged man - her estranged son, whom she hasn't seen for five years.

Days in the Trees

1967

Tell Me Lies poster
6.4

Adapted and directed by Peter Brook from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s ‘production-in-progress US’, this long-unseen agitprop drama-doc – shot in London in 1967 and released only briefly in the UK and New York at the height of the Vietnam War – remains both thought-provoking and disturbing. A theatrical and cinematic social comment on US intervention in Vietnam, Brook’s film also reveals a 1960s London where art, theatre and political protest actively collude and where a young Glenda Jackson and RSC icons such as Peggy Ashcroft and Paul Scofield feature prominently on the front line. Multi-layered scenarios staged by Brook combine with newsreel footage, demonstrations, satirical songs and skits to illustrate the intensity of anti-war opinion within London’s artistic and intellectual community.

Tell Me Lies

1968

Rhodes of Africa poster
7.5

Rhodes of Africa is a 1936 British biographical film charting the life of Cecil Rhodes. It was directed by Berthold Viertel and starred Walter Huston, Oskar Homolka, Basil Sydney and Bernard Lee.

Rhodes of Africa

1936

October Revolution poster
10.0

French director Frederic Rossif presents this historical documentary that coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Stock footage from both World Wars are included with 30 minutes of new scenes filmed especially for the project. The historical timeline is traced from the time Czar Nicholas II is crowned. The emergence of Lenin, his death in 1924, and the later contributions of Trotsky and Stalin give the viewer a sense of death, betrayal, and ideological devotion to the communist agenda. Rossif effectively uses scenes from the landmark 1929 film The Man With A Movie Camera by celebrated director Dziga Vertov. Rossif researched the film archives from several countries in his meticulous gathering of materials for this timely historical feature.

October Revolution

1967

The Pedestrian poster
7.0

When a German businessman causes a car accident with deadly consequences, the papers start digging into his past to find scandals. What they find causes him to reevaluate his own past during WW2 when he was in Greece.

The Pedestrian

1973

The Heat of the Day poster
8.0

In World War II England, a woman is approached by a man claiming to work as an intelligence agent who has found out her lover is a spy. He promises to not arrest him if she'll have a relationship with him.

The Heat of the Day

1989

The Wandering Jew poster
7.4

Old Jerusalem: Matathias, spiteful over his lover's illness, spits on Jesus along the road to Calvary, and is cursed to live endlessly until His return. The Crusades, 1150: Matathias, now an anonymous knight, competes for glory in combat and for the wife of a soldier. Palermo, 1290: Matteos Battadios witnesses the death of his young son, leading to conflict with his wife over whether to take comfort in Christianity. Seville, 1560: Dr Matteos Battadios dedicates himself to the treatment and comfort of the poor, but his life and work are endangered by the arrival of the Spanish Inquisition.

The Wandering Jew

1933

Caught on a Train poster
5.2

British playwright Stephen Poliakoff's comical teleplay investigates Europe's changing social landscape via three strangers who meet on a train. Peter, an English businessman on an overnight trip through Europe, shares a compartment with a beautiful American woman, Lorraine. But Peter's hope for romance is soon dampened by Lorraine's xenophobia and the arrival of a haughty Viennese aristocrat.

Caught on a Train

1980

Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures poster
6.1

A legendary collection of miniature paintings have been locked up in the storeroom of an Indian palace for years; the collection's fame attracts a group of art lovers and fortune seekers who converge simultaneously on the palace.

Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures

1978