Birth and Family Background
John Gielgud was born in South Kensington in London to Katie Terry and Frank Gielgud. He had a theatrical lineage - on his father's side his great grandmother Aniela Aszpergerowa, had been a well known Polish actress (called by British press incorrectly Lithuanian). Gielgud family had Lithuanian roots. ,- and on his mother's side, being the grandson of actress Kate Terry, whose actor-siblings included Ellen Terry, Marion Terry and Fred Terry.
Gielgud's Catholic father, Franciszek Giełgud, born in 1880, was a descendant of a Polish noble family residing at a manor in a town called Giełgudyszki (now Gelgaudiškis in Marijampolė County, Lithuania). In his autobiography, Gielgud states repeatedly and clearly that his father was Polish Catholic, and mentions Gelgaudiškis as being his ancestral home whence his family and their surname originated.
His elder brother Val came to be a pioneering influence in BBC Radio. His brother Lewis was a scholar, writer, intelligence officer and humanitarian worker. His niece Maina Gielgud is a dancer and one time artistic director of the Australian Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet.
Read more about this topic: John Gielgud
Famous quotes containing the words birth, family and/or background:
“Not yet the thirtieth year, the thirtieth
Station where time reverses his light heels
To run both ways, and makes of forward back;
Whose long co-ordinates are birth and death....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“The intent of matrimony, is not for man and wife to be always taken up with each other, but jointly to discharge the duties of civil society, to govern their family with prudence, and educate their children with discretion.”
—Anonymous, U.S. women’s magazine contributor. Weekly Visitor or Ladies Miscellany (June 1807)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)