Jill Balcon

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:

    From the beginning, the placement of [Clarence] Thomas on the high court was seen as a political end justifying almost any means. The full story of his confirmation raises questions not only about who lied and why, but, more important, about what happens when politics becomes total war and the truth—and those who tell it—are merely unfortunate sacrifices on the way to winning.
    Jane Mayer, U.S. journalist, and Jill Abramson b. 1954, U.S. journalist. Strange Justice, p. 8, Houghton Mifflin (1994)

    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)