Alice Pearce

Gladys Kravitz was played from 1966 by Sandra Gould. In 2003, she took on the major role of playing Julie McNamara in the controversial television drama Nip/Tuck based on the lives of plastic surgeons. Diagnosed with terminal cancer before the show began, Pearce kept her illness a secret, but died from ovarian cancer during the second season. Richardson expressed sympathy with Marie-Antoinette's undeserved fate, something which she tried to convey in the film. However, it was a critical failure: "an endless illustrated Harlequin paperback of mawkish backstory and corset-popping purple prose", according to Jessica Winter in the Village Voice, though Richardson's performance was listed among the "incidental pleasures" of the film by Roger Ebert and described as a "sly, commanding performance that reflects a marvelous understanding of this notorious character" by Salon.com. Pearce was posthumously awarded an Emmy Award for this role. This was a lavish costume drama based on a scandal in the final days of the French monarchy, when Marie-Antoinette's reputation was trashed by a confidence trickster, who absconded with a lavish diamond necklace which she had purchased using the Queen's name but without her knowledge. Her hysterical accusations against Samantha, played by Elizabeth Montgomery, and the disbelief of her husband Abner, played by George Tobias, provided a common thread through many of the series early episodes. Thus, she secured the role of that queen in the 2001 film The Affair of the Necklace.

As the nagging and nosy neighbor, Gladys Kravitz, Pearce's scenes were almost entirely reactions to acts of witchcraft she had witnessed at the house across the street. Later that year she was modelling on a necklace, when director Charles Shyer noticed her resemblance to doomed 18th-century royal Marie Antoinette. In 1964 she joined the cast of the television series Bewitched. Two years later she played opposite Mel Gibson in the successful film, The Patriot loosely based on the American Revolution. More movie roles followed, and she made appearances on Broadway, where she met her husband director Paul Davis during a production of The Bells are Ringing. In 1998 in the popular television drama The Echo she played sultry Amanda Powell. Her comedic performance was well received by critics and public alike, and she was given her own television variety show. In 1996 she played the fashion designer Anita in the popular Disney film 101 Dalmatians opposite Glenn Close as Cruella deVil.

Gene Kelly was so impressed by her, that she became the only cast member to be included in the film version in 1949. She later appeared as a fictional Finnish princess, Anna, in the 1991 comedy King Ralph. Two years later, she appeared as Lady Chatterley in a televison drama of the same title. She began working in nightclubs as a comedienne and was cast in the Broadway production of On The Town. After an early leading role in Peter Greenaway's cult success Drowning by Numbers, her first major role in front of a mass audience was as Joanna Farley in a 1989 television episode of Poirot, the Agatha Christie-based detective series. Born Alicia Pearce in New York City, Pearce was educated in Europe and returned to the US as an adult. She is the daughter of screen legend Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson, the granddaughter of Sir Michael Redgrave, sister of Natasha Richardson and niece of Lynn Redgrave. Joely Richardson appeared as an extra at the age of three in the 1968 version of The Charge of the Light Brigade directed by her father. Alice Pearce (October 16, 1913 - March 3, 1966) was an American actress. Joely Richardson (born 9 January 1965) is a British actress, who was born into a theatrical family.