Leighton, Margaret

Leighton, Margaret (1922–76), stylish and elegant English actress, who first appeared at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1938 and later joined the Old Vic company in London. She emerged as a leading actress with her Celia Coplestone in T. S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party (1950), her Masha in Chekhov's Three Sisters in 1951, and a season at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (1952), where she played Lady Macbeth, Ariel in The Tempest, and Rosalind in As You Like It. In a revival of Shaw's The Apple Cart in 1953 she played Orinthia to the King Magnus of Noël Coward, and in the same year was seen as Lucasta Angel in Eliot's The Confidential Clerk. She was much admired in Rattigan's Separate Tables (1954; NY, 1956), and in the same author's Variations on a Theme (1958). After her Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing to the Benedick of John Gielgud in New York in 1959, she returned to London in John Mortimer's The Wrong Side of the Park (1960) and in a revival of Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea (1961). Back in New York she gave a fine performance as Hannah Jelkes in Tennessee Williams's The Night of the Iguana (also 1961). She remained in the United States for some years, appearing in Billetdoux's Chin-Chin (1962), Enid Bagnold's The Chinese Prime Minister (1964), and a revival in 1967 of Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes. Returning to England, she was seen at Chichester in 1969 as Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra and again in 1971 as Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan's The Rivals and Elena in Sherwood's Reunion in Vienna, repeating the latter part in London a year later. She made her last appearance in Julian Mitchell's dramatization of Ivy Compton-Burnett's novel A Family and a Fortune (1975).