Biography
She was born in London, of Spanish descent on her mother's side, and made her stage début at Theatre Royal, Brighton in 1887. From 1888 she played important parts in London, at first under Rutland Barrington and John Hare at the Garrick Theatre.
She toured Australia and America, playing leading parts in modern plays, notably Clyde Fitch's Sapho, where she was arrested for "violating public decency" and later found innocent at trial. Her powerful emotional acting, however, made a great effect in some other plays, such as Carmen, in which she again appeared in America in 1906.
She served as a nurse in London throughout World War I and later established the People's League of Health, for which she received the Royal Red Cross (RRC) in 1920. She combined her theatre work with health work for the rest of her life. She was created a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1936.
She died on 9 January 1951 in Bournemouth, England.
Read more about this topic: Olga Nethersole
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)