Diane Cilento (5 October 1933 - 6 October 2011) was an Australian theatre and film actress and author.

Biography

Early life and education

Cilento was born in Mooloolaba, Queensland, Australia. Her parents, Sir Raphael Cilento and Phyllis, Lady Cilento (née Phyllis Dorothy McGlew), were both distinguished medical practitioners in Queensland. Her paternal great-grandfather was Italian. Her maternal grandfather was merchant and exporter Charles Thomas McGlew.

At an early age she decided to follow a career as an actress and after being expelled from school in Australia, was schooled in New York while living with her father. She later won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and moved to England in the early 1950s.

Career

After graduation, Cilento found work on stage almost immediately and was signed to a five-year contract by Sir Alexander Korda. Her first leading role in a movie was in the British film Passage Home (1955), opposite fellow Australian Peter Finch.

She soon secured roles in British films and worked steadily until the end of the decade. In 1956, Cilento was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Supporting or Featured Actress (Dramatic) for Helen of Troy in Jean Giraudoux's Tiger at the Gates.

She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Tom Jones in 1963 and appeared in The Third Secret the following year but she allowed her film career to decline following her marriage to actor Sean Connery, the second of her three husbands, to whom she was married from 1962-1973. They had one son, the actor Jason Connery. She also had a daughter, Giovanna, with her first husband. Cilento has stated that she was beaten unconscious by Connery in their hotel room during filming of The Hill.

In Connery's James Bond film You Only Live Twice, she doubled for her husband's co-star Mie Hama in a diving scene because Hama was indisposed.

She starred with Charlton Heston in the 1965 film The Agony and the Ecstasy, and with Paul Newman in the 1967 western film Hombre.

In 1985, Cilento married Anthony Shaffer, a playwright, who wrote the script of The Wicker Man; she met him when she appeared in the film in 1973 and he joined her when she returned to Queensland in 1975.

Cilento continued working as an actress, in films and television; in the 1980s, she settled in Mossman, north of Cairns, where she built her own outdoor theatre, named "Karnak", in the tropical rainforest. The venture allowed her to participate in experimental drama.

In 2006, Cilento released her autobiography, My Nine Lives.

In 2001, she was awarded the Centenary Medal, for "distinguished service to the arts, especially theatre".

Personal life

Family

Parents

• Sir Raphael Cilento (1893-1985)
• Lady Phyllis Cilento (1894-1987)

Siblings

Diane Cilento was the fifth of six children, four of whom became medical practitioners and the other, Margaret, was an artist.

Husbands and children

In her 2006 autobiography My Nine Lives and elsewhere, Cilento said that Sean Connery physically abused her.

Death

Diane Cilento died of cancer at Cairns Base Hospital on 6 October 2011, the day after her 78th birthday. She is survived by both her children. A collection of items from her estate was donated to the Queensland University of Technology and is housed in the library.

Filmography

• Diane Cilento in I Thank a Fool (1962)

• With Peter Finch during filming of Passage Home (1955)

• Wings of Danger (1952)
• Moulin Rouge (1952)
• Meet Mr. Lucifer (1953)
• The Angel Who Pawned Her Harp (1954)
• Passing Stranger (1954)
• Passage Home (1955)
• The Woman for Joe (1955)
• The Passionate Stranger (1957)
• The Admirable Crichton (1957)
• The Truth About Women (1957)
• Jet Storm (1959)
• The Full Treatment (1960)
• The Naked Edge (1961)
• I Thank a Fool (1962)
• Tom Jones (1963)
• The Third Secret (1964)
• Rattle of a Simple Man (1964)
• The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965)
• Hombre (1967)
• Negatives (1968)
• Z.P.G. (1972)
• Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973)
• The Wicker Man (1973)
• Duet for Four (1982)
• For the Term of His Natural Life (1983)
• The Boy Who Had Everything (1984)

Writings

• 1968: Manipulator. Charles Scribner's Sons.
• 1972: Hybrid. Dell Publishing.
• 2007: My Nine Lives. Penguin Books. ISBN 9780143006077

[ Source: Wikipedia ]