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Joan Ann Olivier, Lady Olivier, DBE (born 28 October 1929), better known as Dame Joan Plowright, is a Tony Award- winning, Golden Globe-winning, Academy Award- nominated, and Emmy Award- nominated English actress. She was awarded a CBE in 1970 and was made a Dame (DBE) in the New Year`s Honours of 2004. Plowright was born in Brigg, Lincolnshire, the daughter of Daisy Margaret (née Burton) and William Ernest Plowright, who was a journalist and newspaper editor. She attended Scunthorpe Grammar School and trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

Plowright made her stage debut in 1951 and her London debut in 1954. In 1956 she joined the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre and wwas cast as Margery Pinchwife in The Country Wife. She appeared with George Devine in the Eugène Ionesco play, Les Chaises, Shaw`s Major Barbara and Saint Joan. In 1957 she co-starred with future husband Sir Laurence Olivier in the original London production of John Osborne`s The Entertainer, taking over the role of Jean Rice from Dorothy Tutin when the play transferred from the Royal Court to the Palace Theatre. Plowright continued to appear on stage and in films such as The Entertainer (1960). In 1961 she received a Tony Award for her role in A Taste of Honey on Broadway. After relatively few films in the 1960s and 1970s, she subsequently performed in the medium more regularly, in Dennis the Menace (1993), a cameo in Last Action Hero, Enchanted April, for which she won a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination, and Tea With Mussolini. She was also notable for her major roles in 101 Dalmatians and Balto. Among her television roles, she won another Golden Globe Award and earned an Emmy Award nomination for the HBO film Stalin as the Soviet dictator`s mother-in-law. Her win for Stalin came in the same year as that for Enchanted April (1993), making her the 2nd performer (after Sigourney Weaver in 1989) to win two Globes in a single year. In 2003, Plowright performed in the stage production Absolutely! in London. Plowright was appointed honorary president of the English Stage Company in March 2009, succeeding John Mortimer, who died in January 2009. She was previously vice-president of the company.

Plowright was first married to Roger Gage, an actor, in September, 1953. She divorced him, and in 1961 married Laurence Olivier. Together the couple had three children, Richard Kerr, Tamsin Agnes Margaret and Julie-Kate. Both daughters are actresses.[4] The couple remained married until his death from cancer in 1989. The Plowright Theatre in Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, is named in her honour. Upon her marriage to Sir Laurence Olivier, her formal title became "Lady Olivier", however she does not use it in her professional career. Her brother, David Plowright CBE (1930-2006), was an executive at Granada Television.

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