The Crown’s Jane Lapotaire has died on the age of 81.
The Crown’s Jane Lapotaire
The star – who performed Princess Alice of Battenberg within the Netflix royal drama – handed away on March 5 and was introduced on Thursday (12.03.26) by the Royal Shakespeare Firm.
In an announcement, it mentioned: “We’re saddened to listen to of the dying of RSC Honorary Affiliate Artist, Jane Lapotaire.
“A really good actress, Jane joined the RSC in 1974 to play Viola in Twelfth Evening. A number of years later, she took the title position in Pam Gems’ Piaf, successful Olivier and TONY Greatest Actress awards.
“In 1992, she performed Gertrude reverse Kenneth Branagh in Adrian Noble’s Hamlet. Her remaining two performances for the Firm had been in 2013 because the Duchess of Gloucester in Greg Doran’s Richard II alongside David Tennant, and, in 2015, as Queen Isobel in Henry V, once more directed by Greg.
“Our ideas are with Jane’s household and pals.”
Jane is survived by her 53-year-old son, screenwriter-and-director Rowan Joffe, whom she had along with her ex-husband, movie director Roland Joffe.
Tributes have poured in for Jane – whose profession spanned over 60 years on the stage and display screen – throughout social media.
All Creatures Nice and Small actress Carol Drinkwater, 77, penned on X: “Oh, no! I’m so unhappy to learn this.
“I knew Jane manner again after I was an actress in my twenties on the Nationwide. I seemed as much as her for the standard of her work and the feisty lady she was. Relaxation in Peace, Jane.”
A fan typed on Instagram: “Great actor. I bear in mind being captivated by her efficiency as Woman Macbeth in a BBC Shakespeare movie reverse Nicol Williamson, again within the misty moments of the Eighties. By no means forgotten that. I just about fell in love with theatre on the spot.”
And a supporter wrote on Fb: “Gosh! An outstanding actor. I noticed her within the lead position in Saint Joan at York Theatre Royal again in 1985 after I was solely 14. It was one in all my first visits to the theatre, however had caught in my thoughts. In all probability instrumental in a lifelong love of the humanities. RIP.”
Born in Ipswich, Suffolk, on December 26, 1944, Jane began her leisure profession in 1965 as Ruby Birtle in JB Priestley’s When We Are Married, on the Bristol Previous Vic, the place she stayed for the next two years and went on to be a founding member of The Younger Vic Theatre in 1970.
The star’s breakout position got here in 1977 when she performed the titular position of physicist Marie Curie in a 1977 BBC miniseries, after which Edith Piaf in Pam Gems’s play Piaf for the Royal Shakespeare Firm.
Jane stayed with the latter when it was on the West Finish, the place she scooped up the Olivier Award for Greatest Actress in 1979, after which a Tony Award when the manufacturing was on Broadway in 1981.
Following her divorce from Oliver Wooden in 1967 after two years of marriage, Jane married movie director Roland Joffe in 1974, they usually had one son, Rowan, in 1973.
Jane and Roland divorced in 1980, and she then struck up a romance with actor Michael Pennington.
The actress additionally had spectacular TV credit to her identify, together with portraying Cleopatra within the 1981 BBC manufacturing Antony+Cleopatra, Princess Kuragin within the ITV interval drama Downton Abbey’s 2014 Christmas particular, and Princess Alice of Battenberg in Netflix’s The Crown.
In January 2000, Jane ready to show Shakespeare at Ecole Internationale in Paris, France, however she collapsed with a cerebral haemorrhage.
The star had two main operations and was in intensive take care of a month, which Jane wrote about in her 2003 bestselling memoir, Time Out of Thoughts.
Jane was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2025 and made her remaining public look in February 2026 when she collected it at Windsor Citadel.
