Ellen Terry

Dame Alice Ellen Terry was an English actress of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who lived from 27 February 1847 to 21 July 1928. Born into a family of actors, she began performing as a child in Shakespeare plays in London and toured the British provinces in her teens, resuming her stage career in 1874 and gaining immediate acclaim in Shakespearean and other classic roles. In 1878 she joined Henry Irving's company as his leading lady and for more than two decades was considered the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain, famous above all for her Portia in The Merchant of Venice and her Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing; at George Bernard Shaw's urging she took over management of London's Imperial Theatre in 1903, and her career on stage and, from 1916, in film lasted nearly seven decades.