Acting Career
She had her early training as an actress with the Boston Museum stock company, and afterwards with Edwin Booth. In 1885 Robins married actor George Richmond Parks. Although her husband struggled to get parts, her own acting career gained momentum and she was soon in great demand. On May 31, 1887, Parks left her a note saying he would 'stay in her light no longer' and committed suicide. Suffering from grief and guilt Robins relocated to London the following year. Except for extended visits to the U.S. to visit family, she remained in England for the rest of her life. She first appeared in The Real Little Lord Fauntleroy in 1889. Early in her tenure in London, she became enamoured of Ibsen's plays, starring in Hedda Gabler, A Doll's House and The Master Builder. She soon became known in Britain as "Ibsen's High Priestess." Although she was a gifted actress and she remained one of Britain's most highly respected thespians, her association with Ibsen kept producers from considering her for other roles and limited her acting career. In 1902 she was Lucrezia in Stephen Phillips's Paolo and Francesca at the St. James's Theatre, London.
Read more about this topic: Elizabeth Robins
Famous quotes containing the words acting and/or career:
“Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream.
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council, and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)