Diane Cilento


Elizabeth Diane Cilento was an Australian actress. She is best known for her film roles in Tom Jones, which earned her an Academy Award nomination, Hombre and The Wicker Man. She also received a Tony Award nomination for her performance as Helen of Troy in the play Tiger at the Gates.

Early life

Cilento was born on 2 April 1932 in Brisbane, Queensland, the daughter of Phyllis and Raphael Cilento, both medical practitioners in Queensland. She was the fifth of six children; four of her siblings became medical practitioners, while her sister Margaret was an artist. Cilento's paternal great-grandfather, Salvatore Cilento, arrived from Naples, Italy, in 1855.
It was from a young age that Cilento decided to follow a career as an actress. After being expelled from school in Australia, she was schooled in New York while living with her father. Cilento later won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and moved to Britain in the early 1950s.

Career

After graduation, Cilento found work on stage almost immediately and was signed to a five-year contract by Alexander Korda. Her first leading film role was in the British film Passage Home, opposite fellow Australian Peter Finch. She was in The Woman for Joe playing a Hungarian.
Soon securing roles in British films and working steadily until the end of the decade, in 1956, Cilento was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Supporting or Featured Actress for Helen of Troy in Jean Giraudoux's Tiger at the Gates. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Tom Jones in 1963 and appeared in The Third Secret the following year.
Cilento starred with Charlton Heston in the 1965 film The Agony and the Ecstasy, and with Paul Newman in the 1967 western film Hombre, and had a supporting role in The Wicker Man. She wrote the film The Last Tango with Rudolph Valentino designed by painter Patrick Hockey. Set in Sydney in 1975, it was about a woman so obsessed with Valentino that she has a shrine in her house to keep her memory of him alive.
Cilento continued working as an actress, in films and television. In the 1980s, she settled in Mossman, north of Cairns, where she built her own outdoor theatre, named "Karnak", in the tropical rainforest. The venture allowed her to participate in experimental drama.
In 2001, she was awarded the Centenary Medal for "distinguished service to the arts, especially theatre".

Personal life

In 1955, Cilento married Andrea Volpe, an Italian. She gave birth to their daughter Giovanna in 1957. Cilento and Volpe divorced in 1962. Later that year, Cilento married actor Sean Connery, with whom she had a son, Jason. Cilento and Connery separated in 1971 and divorced in 1973. In her autobiography My Nine Lives, Cilento said that Connery was emotionally and physically abusive during their marriage. In 1985, Cilento married playwright Anthony Shaffer, whom she met in 1972 while working on The Wicker Man. They remained married until his death in 2001.

Death

Cilento died of cancer at Cairns Base Hospital on 6 October 2011.

Filmography

Film

Television

Theatre

Writings

  • 1967 novel: The Manipulator. Charles Scribner's Sons.
  • 1970 novel: Hybrid. Dell Publishing.
  • 2007 autobiography: My Nine Lives. Penguin Books.