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Martha Henry

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Martha Henry was the first actress I ever saw perform on the stage of the Stratford Festival Theatre. She played Miranda to William Hutt’s Prospero in The Tempest and, when she opened her mouth to speak, I fell totally under her spell. In 1968 she blew me away with her performances in Tartuffe, The Three Musketeers and A Midsummer Night’s Dream - she was the sexiest Titania ever. On New Year’s Eve of that year, I found myself at dinner with her. She was living in England at the time but had returned to Canada to appear in the TV production of The Three Musketeers recreating her deliciously evil Milady de Winter. She talked to me about life in London and was one of the three people (Jimmy Blendick and Lorne Weil were the other two) that night who persuaded me my future lay there. A week later I was in London and Martha was my constant theatre companion that first year. (Her then husband, Douglas Rain, was busy every night starring in Hadrian the Seventh.) The Brits soon found out about Martha and she played the lead role in a BBC mini-series of Daniel Deronda. She also appeared in the West End in a whodunnit with Honor Blackman. Returning to Canada and Stratford, she went from triumph to triumph and became a director as well. She conquered film and TV - winning 4 Genies and 3 Geminis - Canada’s equivalent of the Oscar and the Emmy. She’s back at Stratford again this season.

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Martha Henry

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