Whitelaw, Billie

Whitelaw, Billie (1932– ), English actress, who was sent by her mother for theatrical training at her local theatre to cure a stutter. She made her first appearance in London in Feydeau's Hotel Paradiso (1956) and was in the Theatre Workshop production of Alun Owen's Progress to the Park (1960), moving with it to the West End in 1961. In 1962 she starred in Willis Hall and Keith Waterhouse's revue England, Our England and in 1964 she joined the National Theatre company, being seen in the company's productions of Marston's The Dutch Courtesan (1964) and Pinero's Trelawny of the ‘Wells’ (1965) at Chichester and as Maggie in Brighouse's Hobson's Choice at the Old Vic (also 1965). She joined the RSC to appear in David Mercer's After Haggerty (1971), and in 1975 gave a brilliant performance as the inefficient librarian of a newspaper office in Michael Frayn's Alphabetical Order. In 1980, with the RSC again, she played Andromache and Athena in The Greeks, a trilogy based mainly on Euripides, and in 1981 she returned there to star in Passion Play, Peter Nichols's study of adultery. She was also in Hampton's Tales from Hollywood (NT, 1983).

To this already notable career she adds the distinction of being the leading English exponent of Beckett. She was seen, at the Royal Court or the National Theatre, in Play (1964), Not I (1973 and 1975), Footfalls (1976), Happy Days (1979), and Rockaby (1982), and appeared in New York in 1984 (Riverside, 1986) in a triple bill of Rockaby, Enough, and Footfalls.