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Jean Simmons' beauty and grace saw her plucked from dance school, at the tender age of fourteen, to appear in Give Us The Moon (1944), but achieved wider popularity as a young Estella in Great Expectations (1946). Her stardom was sealed when Laurence Olivier selected her to play Ophelia in his screen adaptation of Hamlet two years later, winning her Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival and an Oscar nomination.
Moving to Hollywood with husband Stewart Granger in 1950, Simmons kept busy in a multitude of films including Androcles And The Lion, Young Bess and Guys And Dolls (opposite Marlon Brando and Frink Sinatra). 1960 saw her divorce from Granger, marry director Richard Brooks and co-star in Elmer Gantry with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus. Simmons remained in demand throughout the sixties, culminating in another Oscar nomination for The Happy Ending (1969). She semi-retired in the 1970's but has remained visible on television and the occasional film.
