Then, without taking off her high-heeled ankle-strap snakeskin shoes (she had lovely legs) or changing out of her honey-coloured cashmere sweater and skirt (no bra—in the 1950s—she had good breasts), she began to rehearse. The role had already been successful for Vanessa Redgrave in London and would eventually win an Oscar for Maggie Smith.She traveled to Canada for parts at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Whitehead said her death was due to complications from Parkinson’s disease.The New York Times said Caldwell “flounces onto the stage like a sparrow with illusions of grandeur.”Already well-known to those who followed regional theater, she had made her Broadway debut in “The Devils” in late 1965, temporarily replacing for Anne Bancroft, who injured her back.She made her stage debut at age 9 in a Melbourne production of “Peter Pan.”The Washington Post, noting others had played the role, said that “so masterfully exact is Miss Caldwell that watching her you will probably feel that hers is the only way (to play it). I would like to thank particularly the photographer Joan Marcus for responding so generously to my queries.Involved in an ‘explosive’ love affair with Albert Finney, Zoe Caldwell’s life and career were strongly impacted by these events. It originally implied that Caldwell used the name Zoe in preference to her given name of Ada, but her full name at birth was Zoe Ada Caldwell. In her memoir, “I Will Be Cleopatra,” she wrote that she knew at an early age that her job would be “keeping audiences awake and in their seats.”Caldwell added Broadway directing to her resume starting in 1977 with a comedy, “An Almost Perfect Person,” starring Colleen Dewhurst. As she matured, she accepted only roles that offer a particular challenge. In 1991, she directed Jason Robards and Judith Ivey in “Park Your Car in Harvard Yard.” She was last on Broadway in 2003 as the Mystery Guest Star in “The Play What I Wrote.” She also lent her voice to the “Lilo & Stitch” cartoons and appeared in the 2011 film “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.”She played Callas as the opera superstar critiques, cajoles and inspires a trio of budding singers taking part in the uniquely intense musical education session called a master class.Three of her four Tonys came in collaborations with her husband, Robert Whitehead, who was one of Broadway’s most prolific producers of serious drama.“A performance is a struggle. She was a four-time Tony Award winner, winning Best Featured Actress in a Play for Slapstick Tragedy (1966), and Best Actress in a Play for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1968), Medea (1982), and Master Class (1996). Caldwell is survived by their sons, Sam and Charles, and by two grandchildren.She felt that she was going out of style as a classical actor, and so sought a rebirth in Stratford, Ontario; Langham handed her a lifeline with Rosaline in Love’s Labour’s Lost. In the United States, she did regional theater work at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and the Goodman Theater in Chicago.“Medea wasn’t a character I believed in until my Robert started to talk to me about her in human terms,” she told the New York Times a few days after the Tony ceremony. Cared for lovingly by her sons, Charlie and Sam, Zoe Caldwell lived quietly at the family home in Pound Ridge, New York, until she slipped peacefully away on 16 February 2020.In 1988, with her sons now grown, Zoe extended her advocacy of theatre to teaching when she began a series of appointments as Visiting Eminent Scholar at Florida Atlantic University, where she directed student performances. Caldwell is survived by their sons, Sam and Charles, and by two grandchildren. But, she wrote in her memoirs, ‘I never felt that I really belonged. In addition to her two sons, she is survived by two grandchildren.Then-Associated Press drama critic Michael Kuchwara called Caldwell “incandescent” and said she gave “the performance of her career.”After touring in a wide variety of plays in Australia, she came to England and got to tackle a succession of Shakespearean roles.Terrence McNally’s “Master Class,” which debuted on Broadway in 1995, was another joint effort with Whitehead. While Whitehead remained busy as a Broadway producer, Caldwell balanced her career with raising their sons.In 1981, she directed James Earl Jones as Othello, Plummer as Iago and Dianne Wiest as Desdemona at the Winter Garden in New York. )‘She arrived like a diva come to sing her role with this company,’ Zoe recalled in her memoirs:Everett Collection, Alamy Stock Photo.Life—and lack of opportunity in Australia—swept Zoe back to North America, this time in answer to an invitation from Sir Tyrone Guthrie, who was setting up with Oliver Rea and Peter Zeisler a classical repertory company in an extraordinary new theatre that was still under construction in Minneapolis.Photo by Ron Frehm, Associated Press.University of Melbourne Archives Media Photograph Collection.We practically curtsied. Everett Collection, Alamy Stock Photo. In addition to her sons, she is survived by two grandchildren. Zoe Ada Caldwell, OBE (14 September 1933 – 16 February 2020) was an Australian–born actress. Caldwell married theatre producer and director Robert Whitehead in 1968. She was 86.
Her son Charlie Whitehead said she died of Parkinson’s disease complications on Sunday at her home in New York. I am an actor,” she told the AP in 1986. “When, at last, the crime is at hand, the actress fully dramatizes the struggle between her hunger for revenge and her love of her sons,” Rich wrote. Zoe Caldwell, a four-time Tony Award winner, has died due to complications from Parkinson’s disease.