Adrienne Corri

[citation needed] She appeared in such diverse productions as the science fiction movie Moon Zero Two (1969) and a television version of Twelfth Night (1970), directed by John Sichel, as the Countess Olivia, where she played opposite Sir Alec Guinness as Malvolio.

She was equally at home in the classics of British theatre, giving an outstanding performance as Lady Fidget in a BBC Play of the Month, William Wycherley's Restoration comedy The Country Wife (1977), with Helen Mirren.

She appeared in one of the first English performances in 1968 of Come and Go, Samuel Beckett's one-act "dramaticule", in Beckett's coinage, performed at the Royal Festival Hall as part of "a gala entertainment concerning depravity and corruption" (the words coming from the nineteenth-century definition of obscenity), sponsored by the National Council for Civil Liberties and the Defence of Literature and the Arts Society, which raised funds to support publishers being prosecuted for obscenity.

In his entry for Clifford Anthony Smythe in the online Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, John Calder records that "The profit was much less than expected for a sold-out house, as the person who had volunteered to organise the souvenir programme spent too little time finding advertisers as against providing editorial content.

[13] Corri was acquainted with many of the leading figures in the British theatre, including Joe Orton, who recounted in his diaries that he asked her advice on how best to end his relationship with his lover, Kenneth Halliwell.

[15] In the louche atmosphere of the 1960s, when peers, film stars and gangsters rubbed shoulders, Corri became acquainted with some of London's demi-monde, including the much-married bon viveur John Wodehouse, 4th Earl of Kimberley,[16] as well as socialising with other actors, and the Kray twins at their El Morocco club,[17] one of the haunts of Conservative politician Robert Boothby, an acquaintance of the Krays, who used the twin brothers to supply him with rent boys.

[19][20][21] Corri's research and her article are discussed in "Tom will be a genius – new landscapes by the young Thomas Gainsborough", the catalogue of an exhibition at Philip Mould Ltd, 4–28 July 2009, with text by Lindsay Stainton and Bendor Grosvenor.

Following a claim by Corri for the expense incurred restoring and authenticating the picture, the painting was given to her in May 1990, in an out-of-court settlement with the Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham, which disputed her valuation and the attribution to Gainsborough.