British actress Jane Lapotaire has died, aged 81, according to the Guardian. Her cause of death has not been announced. She is survived by her screenwriter son Rowan Joffe, 53, who she shared with ex-husband, movie director Roland Joffe. The actress got her TV break in the BBC series Marie Curie in 1977, before playing the title role in Pam Gems’ Edith Piaf musical Piaf in London’s West End in 1978, winning an Olivier Award. Two years later, Piaf moved to Broadway, where Lapotaire won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, beating out Elizabeth Taylor. It was her only appearance on Broadway. In recent years, Lapotaire played Princess Irina Kuragin in the fifth season of Downton Abbey and Princess Alice of Battenberg, the mother of Prince Philip, in season three of royal drama The Crown. Her death was announced on Thursday by The Royal Shakespeare Company on Thursday, where she was an Honorary Associate Artist. “A truly brilliant actress, Jane joined the RSC in 1974 to play Viola in Twelfth Night,” the company said in a tribute. “A few years later, she took the title role in Piaf, winning Olivier and Tony Best Actress awards." In 2000, Lapotaire suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage while preparing to teach a course on Shakespeare in Paris. She wrote about her harrowing recovery, which involved a month in the ICU, in the 2004 memoir Time Out of Mind. Last month, Lapotaire was made a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for services to drama.
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