[4] She joined the Old Vic company in 1951, worked with Tyrone Guthrie and there played Desdemona, Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Portia in The Merchant of Venice and her first Lady Macbeth.

Her transformation from "a rejected slut cowering at her lover's feet into a redemption of regal poise" ensured a transfer to London, where Kenneth Tynan wrote of her technique: "It is grandiose, heartfelt, marvellously controlled, clear as crystal and totally unmoving."

In the 1950s, Worth demonstrated her exceptional versatility by playing in the farce Hotel Paradiso in London with Alec Guinness, high tragedy in the title role of Schiller's Mary Stuart, co-starring Eva Le Gallienne, and on Broadway and Shakespearean comedy in As You Like It at Stratford, Ontario.

She also made a number of well-regarded appearances in British films of the period, most notably her powerful performance as a French Resistance agent in Anthony Asquith's 1958 wartime espionage drama Orders to Kill, which earned her the BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actress.

She then went to New York City in 1965 for the opening of Edward Albee's enigmatic Tiny Alice, in which she co-starred with Sir John Gielgud and which won her the first of her three Tony Awards.

She was an acclaimed Hedda Gabler at Stratford, Ontario, a role she considered one of her more satisfying achievements and which prompted Walter Kerr to write in The New York Times "Miss Worth is just possibly the best actress in the world."

She was Madame Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard, for which she received another Tony nomination and which featured Raúl Juliá, Mary Beth Hurt and Meryl Streep, whose career was in its beginning stages.

Worth also appeared in the premiere of The Lady from Dubuque, another Albee play, which closed after 12 performances; a revival of Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman; Toys in the Attic by Lillian Hellman; and The Golden Age by A.R.

On screen in 1982, Worth co-starred with Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve in the film version of a Broadway murder mystery Deathtrap, playing a psychic.

In 1991, she won a third Tony for her performance as the tough-as-nails Grandma Kurnitz in Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers, and later appeared in the film version along with Richard Dreyfuss and Mercedes Ruehl.

She continued to act, and in September 2001, one of her later appearances was with Paul Scofield at the Almeida Theatre in the two-handed play I Take Your Hand in Mine, by Carol Rocamora based on the love letters of Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper.

[3] At her memorial service, held at the Public Theater in New York City, numerous speakers paid tribute to her, including Edward Albee, Christopher Walken, Mercedes Ruehl, Gene Saks, Meryl Streep, Bernard Gersten, and Alan Rickman.