List of performances by Josette Simon

Josette Simon is an English actor of Antiguan descent.^[1][2] Her first theatrical role was as a chorus member in the Leicester Haymarket Theatre production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which was followed by several minor roles in other productions at the same venue.^[1][3] She went on to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama.^[1]

Her first television role was as Dayna Mellanby in the third and fourth series of the television sci-fi series Blake's 7 from 1980 to 1981.^[1][4] She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982 for a two-year cycle, and had four minor roles in Shakespeare plays in her first year: as a witch, a spirit and twice as a servant, which was typical for new members of the company.^[5] In 1984 she was taken on for another two-year cycle, and starred as Dorcas Ableman in Golden Girls, directed by Barry Kyle, which became a breakthrough role for her.^[6][7] Later that year she landed her first leading role at the RSC, the first for a black actress, when she was cast by Kyle as Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost.^[6] In 1985 she directed Heavenly Body by Didier Van Couvelaert for two performances at the Gulbenkian Studio and one night at the Almeida Theatre.^[8][9] In 1987, Simon appeared for the RSC again, in the lead role of Isabella in Measure for Measure.^[10][11] Later leading roles for the RSC saw her as Titania/Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999–2000) and, after a seventeen year interval, Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra (2017–18).^[12][13][14]

On radio, Simon played the title character in the 1985 BBC Radio 3 production of Mirandolina.^[15] She was the lead in David Zane Mairowitz's play Dictator Gal, broadcast on the same station in 1992.^[16][17] Her film appearances include the part of Dr. Ramphele in Cry Freedom (1987),^[18][19] and the lead role of Joanna in Milk and Honey (1988).^[20] She also starred in the 1992 television play Bitter Harvest and alongside Brenda Fricker in the two-part television series Seekers, written by Lynda La Plante in 1993.^[21][22] More recently, she had a recurring role as a defence lawyer in Anatomy of a Scandal (2022).^[23]

She won the Evening Standard's Best Actress award,^[24] a Critics' Circle Theatre Award, and Plays and Players Critic Awards for Arthur Miller's After the Fall,^[25][26] in which she played Maggie, thought to have been based on Marilyn Monroe.^[11] Simon was nominated as Best Actress at the 1989 Genie Awards for her part in the film Milk and Honey (1988),^[20] and won the Best Actress award at both the Atlantic Film Festival and Creteil International Women's Film Festival for the role.^[27][28] She gained a Prix Futura Award nomination for the radio play Dictator Gal (1993).^[27] Simon was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2000, for services to drama.^[29]