Valerie Gearon
Actress
Valerie Winifred Gearon was born on 27 September 1937 in Newport, Monmouthshire — the Wales that was then still firmly Gwent, a place of chapels, dockyards and a strong sense of its own identity. She attended Newport St. Julian High School, where her talent for performance was spotted early. She was introduced to the Newport Playgoers and appeared at their Dock Street theatre — one of those community theatres that have quietly shaped Welsh cultural life for generations. She then trained at the Bristol Old Vic Drama School and went on to appear at the Bristol Old Vic, the Bristol Hippodrome and in West End productions in London.
Her film debut came in Nine Hours to Rama (1963), a Hollywood production directed by Mark Robson about the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Twentieth Century Fox had plans to build her into a movie star — the publicity campaign around the film described her as a major new talent — but the film was a critical and box-office disappointment and the studio quietly abandoned those plans. Undeterred, she continued working in television and theatre, appearing in The Wednesday Play on BBC (1964), Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton (1965), Invasion (1966), and the BBC's Out of the Unknown anthology series.
Her most celebrated role came in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), the lavish historical drama starring Richard Burton as Henry VIII and Geneviève Bujold as Anne Boleyn. Valerie played Mary Boleyn — Anne's sister and Henry's former mistress — in a film that was nominated for ten Academy Awards including Best Picture. The connection with fellow Welsh actor Richard Burton gave the film a quietly pleasing Welsh dimension that few reviewers noted at the time. Her television career continued with the BBC's Persuasion (1971), Casanova (1971) and Point Counterpoint (1972).
