Diane Cilento

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

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

With Peter Finch in Passage Home (1955)

With Laurence Harvey in the television play The Small Servant. Both made their US television debuts in this production for The Alcoa Hour (1955).

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, she 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. However, she allowed her film career to decline following her marriage to actor Sean Connery, the second of her three husbands and to whom she was married from 1962 to 1973. They had one son, the actor Jason Connery. She had previously had a daughter, Giovanna, with her first husband. Cilento stated that she was beaten unconscious by Connery in their hotel room during the 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 playwright Anthony Shaffer, who wrote the script of The Wicker Man; she met him when she appeared in that 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 2001, she was awarded the Centenary Medal for "distinguished service to the arts, especially theatre".

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

Family

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

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

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.

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  Diane Cilento in I Thank a Fool (1962)

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  With Peter Finch during filming of Passage Home (1955)

• Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) - Maria Hornblower (voice, uncredited)
• Wings of Danger (1952) - Jeannette
• Moulin Rouge (1952) - Midinette (uncredited)
• Meet Mr. Lucifer (1953) - Woman in street (uncredited)
• The Angel Who Pawned Her Harp (1954) - The Angel
• Passing Stranger (1954) - Jill
• Passage Home (1955) - Ruth Elton
• The Woman for Joe (1955) - Mary
• The Passionate Stranger (1957) - Undetermined Secondary Role (uncredited)
• The Admirable Crichton (1957) - Tweeny
• The Truth About Women (1957) - Ambrosine Viney
• Jet Storm (1959) - Angelica Como
• The Full Treatment (1960) - Denise Colby
• The Naked Edge (1961) - Mrs. Heath
• I Thank a Fool (1962) - Liane Dane
• Tom Jones (1963) - Molly Seagrim
• The Third Secret (1964) - Anne Tanner
• Rattle of a Simple Man (1964) - Cyrenne
• The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) - Contessina de'Medici
• Hombre (1967) - Jessie Brown
• Negatives (1968) - Reingard
• Z.P.G. (1972) - Edna Borden
• Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973) - Hanna Reitsch
• The Wicker Man (1973) - Miss Rose
• Big Toys (1980)
• Duet for Four (1982) - Margot Mason
• For the Term of His Natural Life (1983) - Lady Elinor Devine
• The Boy Who Had Everything (1985) - Mother

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