Isabel Jeans

Isabel Jeans (16 September 1891 – 4 September 1985) was an English stage and film actress. She played a couple of major roles in two Alfred Hitchcock silent films, Downhill (1927) and Easy Virtue (1928), before playing a number of grande dames in Hollywood films, such as Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941) and Gigi (1958). In 1968 she played a definitive Lady Bracknell in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest at London's Theatre Royal Haymarket, which... more

Isabel Jeans (16 September 1891 – 4 September 1985) was an English stage and film actress. She played a couple of major roles in two Alfred Hitchcock silent films, Downhill (1927) and Easy Virtue (1928), before playing a number of grande dames in Hollywood films, such as Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941) and Gigi (1958). In 1968 she played a definitive Lady Bracknell in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest at London's Theatre Royal Haymarket, which ran for nine months to packed houses. Other members of the cast were Pauline Collins, Daniel Massey, Helen Weir, Robert Eddison and Dame Flora Robson. Jeans' brother Desmond was an actor and boxer, while her sister Ursula became a respected character actress and married the actor Roger Livesey. She was twice married, both times to fellow actors: less