Jill Balcon
Jill Angela Henriette Balcon (3 January 1925 – 18 July 2009) was an English film and radio actress. She made her film debut in Nicholas Nickleby (1947), though she was best known for her stage, television and radio work.
Balcon was born in Westminster, London, the daughter of Aileen Freda Leatherman (1904–1988) and Michael Balcon. Her family was Jewish, and originated in Lithuania on her father's side and Poland on her mother's. Balcon attended Roedean.
In 1951, Balcon married Irish poet Cecil Day-Lewis, who was 21 years her senior and was married when they began their relationship. He was dividing his time between his mistress Rosamond Lehmann in Oxfordshire, his wife, Mary Day-Lewis, and their two teenage sons, in Devon.
Cecil Day-Lewis broke with both his wife and his mistress to be with Balcon for the remainder of his life (although reputedly he was no more faithful to Balcon than he had been to his first wife and to Lehmann). Balcon was cut off by her father when she married Day-Lewis in 1951. Cecil Day-Lewis and Jill Balcon had two children: actor Daniel Day-Lewis and documentary filmmaker/television chef Tamasin Day-Lewis.
Read more about Jill Balcon: Death
Famous quotes containing the words jill and/or balcon:
“Jack and Jill
Went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down,
And broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.”
—Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. Jack and Jill (l. 1–6)
“I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Negres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness”
—Frank O’Hara (1926–1966)