Dame Joan Plowright, the Tony Award-winning British actress and widow of Laurence Olivier, has died at 95.

Award-winning British actress Joan Plowright, who with her late husband Laurence Olivier did much to revitalize the British theater scene in the decades after World War II, has died. She was 95 years old.

In a statement on Friday, her family said Plowright died a day earlier at Denville Hall, a retirement home for actors in southern England, surrounded by her loved ones.

“She enjoyed a long and illustrious career in theatre, film and television over seven decades until blindness forced her retirement,” the family said. “We are so proud of all that Joan has done and for being such a loving and deeply inclusive human being.”

Part of an astonishing generation of British actors, incl Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Eileen Atkins and Maggie SmithPlowright has won a Tony Award, two Golden Globes, and Oscar and Emmy nominations. Queen Elizabeth II declared her a woman in 2004.

From the 1950s to the 1980s, Plowright landed dozens of stage roles in everything from Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull to William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. She stunned in Eugene Ionesco’s “Chairs” and George Bernard Shaw’s two totemic female roles, “Major Barbara” and “Saint Joan”.

“I’ve been very privileged to have that kind of life,” Plowright said in an interview with The work of an actor. “I mean, it’s magic and I still feel, when the curtain goes up or the lights come on if there’s no curtain, the magic of the beginning of what’s about to unfold before me.”

The respect that Plowright enjoyed in London was evident with news that cinemas all over London West End will dim their lights for two minutes at 7pm on Tuesday in her honour.

Born Joan Ann Plowright in Brigg, Lincolnshire, England, her mother ran an amateur drama group, and Plowright was involved in theater from the age of 3. Soon, she spent her school holidays attending summer lectures at university drama schools. After high school, she studied at Laban Art of Movement in Manchester, and then won a two-year scholarship to drama school at the Old Vic Theater in London.

After debuting on the London stage in 1954, Plowright became a member of the Royal Court Theater in 1956 and gained recognition in plays written by the so-called Angry Young Men, such as John Osborne, who thoroughly aired the British theatre. New, gritty, working-class actors like Albert Finney, Alan Bates, and Anthony Hopkins were her peers.

Plowright made her feature film debut with an uncredited role in American director John Huston’s 1956 adaptation of Herman Melville’s epic Moby Dick, starring Gregory Peck as the possessed Captain Ahab.

A year later she starred with her future husband Olivier in the original London production of Osborne’s “The Entertainer”. She played Olivier’s daughter in the piece and the two reunited for the 1960 film adaptation.

By then, Plowright’s marriage to British actor Roger Cage had ended, as had Olivier’s 20-year union with Vivien Leigh. Plowright and Olivier were married in Connecticut in 1961 while they were both acting on Broadway, he in “Becket” and she in “A Taste of Honey,” for which she won a Tony.

One love letter sent by Olivier summed up his love: “Sometimes I feel such a peace come over me when I think of you or write to you—a tender tenderness and serenity. A feeling devoid of violence, passion, or devastating longing. .makes me go out into the street with with a smile on the face and in the heart for everyone.”

Olivier died in 1989 at the age of 82. Subsequently, Plowright enjoyed a career resurgence at the age of 60, catering to both luxury tastes and a more commercial offering.

She starred in Franco Zeffirelli’s version of Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” in 1996 and the Merchant-Ivory production of “Surviving Picasso,” as well as the lead role of a live-in nanny in Disney’s 1996 remake of “101 Dalmatians” with Glenn. Close.

She starred opposite Walter Matthau in the big screen adaptation of the comic book classic “Dennis the Menace” and appeared briefly in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s self-referential satire “Last Action Hero” in 1993.

Plowright became one of only a handful of actors to win two Golden Globes in the same year, in 1993, when she won the television award for supporting actress for “Stalin” and the award for supporting actress for “Charmed April.” For the latter, which told the story of a group of Britons who find their lives changed while on holiday in Italy, she received her only Oscar nomination.

Not all of her works were career roses, such as the disastrous “The Scarlet Letter” starring Demi Moore and the failed pilot for a TV series based on “Driving Miss Daisy.” Appearing opposite Chevy Chase in the 2011 holiday family comedy “Goose on the Loose” was not met with critical acclaim.

She played a prominent role in later life as the keeper of Olivier’s flame — presenting awards, defending her husband in the press, and curating his letters.

“It’s my choice because I had the privilege of living with him,” she told The Daily Telegraph in 2003. “When someone who’s had such fame, idolatry and adoration leaves, then there’s bound to be a backlash that comes from the other side and Malo ti is sick of it. Mine was really trying to make things right.”

Plowright is survived by her three children – Tamsin, Richard and Julie-Kate, all actors, and several grandchildren.