Born in Coventry. From an acting family her stage career started at age 8. When 17 she retired from the stage to marry artist G.F. Watts, 30 years her senior. Her desire for the stage was greater than that for her husband and they separated after less than a year. She disappeared and her father misidentified a body recovered from the Thames as hers. She resurfaced to reveal that she was, aged 20, having a happy affair with the architect-designer Edward W. Godwin, which produced two children. She went on to have two more marriages, each to actors (Irving and an American 30 years her junior), but her greatest partnership was professional, with the actor/manager Henry Irving. Died at her home in Kent, Smallhythe, which is now a museum. John Gielgud was her great-nephew.
This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Ellen Terry
Commemorated ati
Queen's Theatre - Long Acre
Queen's Theatre The old Queen's Theatre occupied this site for just eleven y...
Other Subjects
Dick Whittington's cat
See Dick Whittington. The picture is the charming logo adopted by the Whittington Hospital on Highgate Hill.
Maria Theresa Kemble
Actress. Born Vienna. Wife to Charles Kemble, with daughter Fanny. Died near Chertsey.
Red Bull Playhouse
The inn's owner converted the inn-yard into the theatre. Parliament banned theatres in 1642 but some carried on and the Red Bull was successfully raided in 1649 and in 1655. The 1660 Restoration al...
John Heminge
Fellow actor and friend of William Shakespeare and Henry Condell. Heminge and Condell had been co-partners with Shakespeare in the Globe Theatre. On his death the plays existed only in the form of...
Peter Hall
Sir Peter Reginald Frederick Hall CBE was a theatre and film director who was born on 22 November 1930 in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk. He founded the Royal Shakespeare Company and was its first artis...