Death: July 11, 2021.
HOW MANY people who, if stabbed during their workday and bleeding profusely, would act like nothing happened? Could you imagine an accountant, a bus driver, or a reporter dismissing the real possibility of death for a few minutes, just to complete the task at hand?
This is precisely what Colette O’Neil did. The Glasgow-born actress, who died aged 85 of heart disease and dementia, was accidentally stabbed during the final scene of Jean Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos at the Traverse Theater Club, Edinburgh, January 3, 1963.
The Glasgow Herald reported that her colleague, Rosamund Dickson, was forced to pounce on O’Neil with a knife and drop him after a fight, but he got entangled in O’Neil’s robe and ” was accidentally stuck in his stomach “. Despite the obvious blood loss – so terrifying that Dickson passed out – O’Neil managed to utter the last tempting line of fate – “You can’t kill me, I’m already dead” – before collapsing.
Advance bookings for the play have skyrocketed, and Traverse membership has dramatically increased to 2,000 as a result of the media coverage. The incident, wrote John Linklater in the Herald in 1992, “was to quickly establish Traverse in the public imagination as a new kind of theatrical experience, wild and not little dangerous.”
“My mom was made of strong stuff,” her daughter Lara says of the performer who has appeared in a wide range of television productions over the years, from Coronation Street to The Morecambe and Wise Show, and in Scottish classics. miners such as Hamish Macbeth and Monarque du Glen.
“She would never use the word ‘stab’ to describe what happened when the blade of the other actor’s knife slipped and plunged into her stomach. It was just an accident. Mom was incredibly pragmatic. . She just did stuff. Although she had to undergo a major operation [the blade narrowly missed vital organs] and that took her for the rest of the race.
O’Neil’s remarkable stoicism manifested itself in other ways. “I remember once when she was performing at the theater in Wales. We went down to the beach for the day and I climbed some big rocks and got stuck. My mom wore high heel boots back then and on the way down she sprained her ankle badly. But, later that night, she appeared on stage, with the slightest hint of limp. ”
Colette O’Neil was an accomplished professional, but her acting career began by accident. Growing up in Glasgow with her three sisters, daughters of principal Neil McCrossan and Maisy, who worked in special schools, Colette attended Notre Dame before studying science at the University of Glasgow with a view to becoming a pharmacist.
But a trip to London for speaking lessons was life-changing for her. “I think it was my grandmother’s idea for my mom to take speech therapy lessons,” Lara says. “And the exam courses were at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in London.”
Seduced by this universe of performance, she enrolled in drama school in the mid-1950s. Her father Neil said at the time: “It was with great apprehension that we authorized this. , but we gave in, because his whole heart seemed to be there. ”
He was right. His daughter has achieved some of the highest marks ever awarded to LAMDA. And soon he was offered to work with Bournemouth Rep, alongside his fellow student David Baron – the stage name of Harold Pinter.
O’Neil’s talent became evident to many theater producers, including the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1959, almost inevitably, given his powerful presence, television came calling him.
Working on the small screen has become a constant, from Z-Cars to No Hiding Place. In the mid-1960s, O’Neil landed a leading role in Coronation Street. “She played a bit of a scarlet woman and was abused for it,” Lara said with a smile, which of course was a testament to the power of the performance.
But the passionate performances weren’t limited to the box in the corner. “As a little girl, I remember mum rehearsing for a play about Scottish coastal villages and soaking up it,” Lara recalls. “She always gave her all.”
While at the Citizens’ Theater in 1961, O’Neil met Michael Ellis, a director. A year later, they married and had three children, Dominic, Lara and Natasha.
But O’Neil had to cope with the breakdown of his marriage in 1973, raising three children while touring the country at the theater and living for periods in Glasgow and Manchester. There is no doubt that the traveling nature of the job conspired to make marriage a real challenge. “My dad remarried,” Lara says, “but my mom didn’t. She had three children to look after, and as to future relationships, I’m not sure. She was an intensely private person, always comfortable in her own space. Still, she had a lot of friends, especially in the theater. And she and my father remained friends, until his death in 2016. ”
The actors of the job are rarely rich. “There were downtimes,” Lara says. “This is how we have an actor as a parent. But I don’t think we lost. What I appreciate is that my mother taught us so much. She taught us to be nice. She taught us rationality. And she was so interesting. She read it all. Mom then studied and graduated in hypnotherapy in her spare time. She would re-upholster the furniture and get her first computer. And she was so much fun and so proud of her children.
“And there aren’t a lot of kids who can go on the set of Doctor Who and see her with Martin Clunes, who played her son.”
Colette O’Neil was a positive and extremely talented woman. The attitude that prevailed after being stabbed on stage in 1963 continued throughout her life. “She refused to accept that she was suffering from dementia,” explains Lara. “She was a woman of great dignity. She had faith, and she faced the disease and moved on. ”
Colette died peacefully at home in her bed. Actress and close friend Ann Scott-Jones summed up her friend with a touching and highly relevant tribute. “She withdrew from life as gracefully as she lived it.”
She is survived by her three children and her sister Pat.
