Joan PlowrightFilmography

The Spiderwick Chronicles

Actors: Freddie Highmore, Mary-Louise Parker, Nick Nolte, Sarah Bolger, Andrew McCarthy

Synopsis: Mark S. Waters's adaptation of the popular fantasy novels The Spiderwick Chronicles tells the tale of the Graces, a family who must adapt to their new strange surroundings. As the story begins, twin brothers Jared and Simon, along with their sister Mallory and their mother, move away from the big Read More

Curious George

Actors: Will Ferrell, Drew Barrymore, Frank Welker, Shane Baumel, Timyra-Joi Beatty

Synopsis: The naughty little monkey from Margret Rey and H.A. Rey's beloved children's stories makes the leap to the big screen in this animated adaptation. Ted (voice of Will Ferrell) is an explorer with a large yellow hat who is good friends with Bloomsberry (voice of Dick Van Dyke), who runs a natural Read More

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont

Actors: Joan Plowright, Rupert Friend, Zoe Tapper, Anna Massey, Robert Lang

Synopsis: An elderly widow and a young would-be author strike up an unlikely friendship in this comedy drama. Mrs. Palfrey (Joan Plowright) has been uneasy since the death of her husband, and she decides to move from her long-time home in Scotland to London so she can be closer to her grandson Desmond (Lorcan O'Toole Read More

I Am David

Actors: Ben Tibber, James Caviezel, Joan Plowright, Hristo Shopov, Silvia De Santis

Synopsis: A young boy is sent on a remarkable odyssey as he flees a Communist prison camp in this historical drama, set in Eastern Europe in the early '50s. David (Ben Tibber) is a 12-year-old boy who was sentenced with his parents to a Bulgarian labor camp when they were found guilty of political Read More

Bringing Down the House

Actors: Steve Martin, Queen Latifah, Eugene Levy, Jean Smart

Synopsis: A man looking for a woman just like himself ends up with someone quite different in this farcical comedy. Peter Sanderson (Steve Martin) is a lawyer who is having trouble getting his life back on track after his wife, Kate (Jean Smart), divorces him; he's also adjusting to his new status as a Read More

George and the Dragon

Actors: James Purefoy, Piper Perabo, Patrick Swayze, Michael Clarke Duncan

Synopsis: The family friendly adventure film George and the Dragon tells the tale of a knight who, upon returning home after an unsettling period fighting the Crusades, agrees to find a king's missing daughter in order to possess some land in a quiet area of the world. Soon he learns that in order to return Read More

Callas Forever

Actors: Fanny Ardant, Jeremy Irons, Joan Plowright, Jay Rodan, Gabriel Garko

Synopsis: A mournful look at the last days of opera diva Maria Callas, director Franco Zeffirelli's biographical drama attempts to explore the irresistible allure of a comeback for a fallen star who hungers for the success of her past. Weathered from the excess of the previous decade and with her best Read More

Rock My World

Actors: Peter O'Toole, Joan Plowright, Alicia Silverstone, Lochlyn Munro, Jaimz Woolvett

Synopsis: Veteran hack director Sidney J. Furie directs the silly straight-to-video comedy Rock My World. The aging stuffy English aristocrats Lord and Lady Foxley (Peter O'Toole and Joan Plowright) have fallen on hard times, so they loan out the use of their mansion to the American rock band Global Heresy. Read More

Bailey's Mistake

Actors: Linda Hamilton, Kyle Secor, Jesse James, Paz de la Huerta, Joan Plowright

Synopsis: "Bailey's Mistake" is the apt cognomen for a dismal, virtually uninhabitable island off the coast of Maine. Upon finding that the island was secretly purchased by her late husband, impoverished widow Liz Donovan (Linda Hamilton) heads "down east" to discover just what it was about Bailey's Mistake Read More

Dinosaur

Actors: D.B. Sweeney, Alfre Woodard, Ossie Davis, Max Casella, Hayden Panettiere, Sam Wright

Synopsis: Walt Disney Pictures redefined computer animation with this technically accomplished fantasy of prehistoric life, combining live-action backgrounds with computer-generated animals. After a pterodactyl snatches a dinosaur's egg and accidentally drops it while flying away, the egg is rescued by a Read More

Back to the Secret Garden

Actors: Camilla Belle, Joan Plowright, George Baker, Cherie Lunghi, Leigh Lawson

Synopsis: Although Frances Hodgson Burnett did not feel the need to write a sequel to her classic fantasy novel The Secret Garden, this did not prevent producer Norman Rosemont from commissioning just such a sequel. Set in 1946, Back to the Secret Garden finds Mary Lennox, the youthful heroine of the Read More

Frankie and Hazel

Actors: Joan Plowright, Mischa Barton, Ingrid Uribe, Richard Yniguez

Synopsis: Two friends get their first taste of adult responsibilities in this made-for-cable comedy-drama. Francesca (Mischa Barton) and Hazel (Ingrid Uribe) are two 12-year-old girls growing up in Percaucus, an economically depressed community that's seen better days. Hazel, who has an avid interest in Read More

Christmas Glory From Westminster

Synopsis: Home Vision Cinema presents Christmas Glory From Westminster. This program features poetry and music from celebrities from the worlds of film and opera. Readings include Greta Scacchi reciting William Blake's The Lamb and Joan Plowright reading Kipling's Eddie's Service, while the performances Read More

Tea With Mussolini

Actors: Cher, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, Lily Tomlin

Synopsis: Based in part on his autobiography, director Franco Zeffirelli's Tea With Mussolini is a drama with comic accents about a group of British and American travelers on an indefinite visit to Italy in 1935, when, as one character puts it, "Mussolini was just a man who made the trains run on time." Read More

Encore! Encore! [TV Series]

Actors: Nathan Lane, Joan Plowright, Glenne Headly, Trevor Fehrman, James Patrick Stewart

Synopsis: In this TV sitcom, damaged vocal cords cut short the career of egomaniacal opera star Joe Pinoni (Nathan Lane), prompting his sudden return home to the Napa Valley where his family has a winery. His eccentric mother, Marie Pinoni (Joan Plowright), who usually finds companionship attending funerals Read More

Dance with Me

Actors: Vanessa Williams, Chayanne, Kris Kristofferson, Joan Plowright, Jane Krakowski, William Marquez, Harry Groener

Synopsis: Randa Haines directed this dance drama, focusing on young Cuban Rafael Infante (Latino singer Chayanne) after the death of his mother. Rafael leaves Cuba for Houston, where he meets his father John Burnett (Kris Kristofferson) for the first time. Burnette is unaware that the young man is his son Read More

Tom's Midnight Garden

Actors: Greta Scacchi, James Wilby, Joan Plowright, Anthony Way, David Bradley

Synopsis: This fantasy for younger audiences concerns Tom (Anthony Way), a 14-year-old English boy who in the 1950s is sent to live with his Aunt Gwen (Greta Scacchi) and Uncle Alan (James Wilby) after one of his siblings becomes seriously ill. Late one night, Tom makes a remarkable discovery -- after Read More

Aldrich Ames: Traitor Within

Actors: Timothy Hutton, Elizabeth Peña, Joan Plowright

Synopsis: More chilling than fiction, this taut drama chronicles the CIA's search to prove that one of its agents has succumbed to greed and is exchanging highly classified government secrets for money. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Assistant

Actors: Gil Bellows, Kate Greenhouse, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Joan Plowright, Jaimz Woolvett

Synopsis: Daniel Petrie scripted and directed this Canadian-British film, an adaptation of the memorable 1957 Brooklyn-based novel by Brooklyn-born Bernard Malamud, author of The Natural. During the Depression, drifter Frank Alpine (Gil Bellows) and hobo Ward Minogue (Jaimz Woolvett) rob the small Bober Read More

Surviving Picasso

Actors: Anthony Hopkins, Natascha McElhone, Julianne Moore, Joss Ackland, Peter Eyre, Diane Venora

Synopsis: This unusual biography of the renowned Spanish artist Pablo Picasso is a Merchant-Ivory film. The team of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has been responsible for many period dramas, including A Room with a View and Howard's End. The story of Read More

Jane Eyre

Actors: William Hurt, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Joan Plowright, Anna Paquin, Geraldine Chaplin

Synopsis: Director Franco Zeffirelli stresses emotional realism over gothic chills in this restrained adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's classic. The screenplay, by Zeffirelli and Hugh Whitmore, remains relatively faithful to the original story, beginning with a condensed look at the troubled childhood of Read More

101 Dalmatians

Actors: Glenn Close, Jeff Daniels, Joely Richardson, Joan Plowright, Hugh Laurie

Synopsis: There are more puppies than you can shake a rolled up newspaper at in this live-action remake of the Disney animated favorite 101 Dalmatians. Roger (Jeff Daniels) is a designer of computer games who shares his home with his pet dalmatian, Pongo. One day, Roger takes Pongo for a walk in the park Read More

Mr. Wrong

Actors: Ellen DeGeneres, Bill Pullman, Joan Cusack, Dean Stockwell, Joan Plowright

Synopsis: Popular comic and television personality Ellen DeGeneres had her first starring role in a feature film in this black comedy. Martha Alston (DeGeneres) is a thirtysomething single working as a producer for a talk show. Ever since Martha's younger sister got married, her parents have been after her Read More

A Pyromaniac's Love Story

Actors: William Baldwin, John Leguizamo, Sadie Frost, Erika Eleniak, Michael Lerner

Synopsis: This is an offbeat romantic comedy that's the directorial debut of TV producer Joshua Brand, co-creator of St. Elsewhere (1982-88) and Northern Exposure (1990-95). John Leguizamo stars as Sergio, a Toronto pastry shop worker who faints whenever he sees Hattie (Sadie Frost), a neighborhood girl Read More

Hotel Sorrento

Synopsis: This Australian drama is an adaptation of Hannie Rayson's award-winning play. It is the tale of the three Moynihan sisters, Hilary, a widow who lives in the family "hotel" with their father and her teenage son; Pippa, who lives in New York; and Meg, who lives in London. After a long absence, the Read More

The Scarlet Letter

Actors: Demi Moore, Gary Oldman, Robert Duvall, Robert Prosky, Edward Hardwicke

Synopsis: Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel of hypocrisy among America's pilgrims was brought to the screen by director Roland Joffe in this 1995 feature. Demi Moore stars as Hester Prynne, a new arrival to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1666. Prynne, who interacts freely with slaves and Quakers and Read More

The Grass Harp

Actors: Piper Laurie, Sissy Spacek, Walter Matthau, Edward Furlong, Nell Carter

Synopsis: Based on the novel by Truman Capote, this often-witty coming-of-age drama looks at a young man growing up with an unusual family in the Deep South in the 1940s. After the death of his parents, Collin Fenwick (Edward Furlong) finds himself living in a small town with two of his aunts, Dolly (Piper Laurie Read More

The Return of the Native

Actors: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Clive Owen

Synopsis: Unlike the barren and forbidding moors elsewhere in England, Return of the Native's Egdon Heath attires itself in vibrant wildflowers, mossy hillsides, winding streams, arching footbridges, and undulant meadows. An enchantress would be at home in this place, but not Eustacia Vye, portrayed by Read More

A Place for Annie

Actors: Sissy Spacek, Mary-Louise Parker, Joan Plowright, Jack Noseworthy

Synopsis: In this touching drama, a kind-hearted pediatric nurse tries to adopt an HIV-positive baby and ends up taking care of its troubled, dying mother as well. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

On Promised Land

Actors: Joan Plowright, Carl Lumbly, Norman D. Golden II

Synopsis: Set in the South during the 1950s, this touching youth-oriented drama recounts the tragic events that lead a rich, white widow to befriend a young black child. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

A Pin for the Butterfly

Actors: Joan Plowright, Ian Bannen, Hugh Laurie, Imogen Stubbs, Ian Hogg

Synopsis: This complex political drama zeroes in on the life of a small bourgeois family living in Stalinist Czechoslovakia. It is set in the 50's. The family is falling apart from the pressure to think along party lines, even in private. The mere mention of the West could result in prison, or worse. Little Read More

Widows' Peak

Actors: Mia Farrow, Joan Plowright, Natasha Richardson, Adrian Dunbar, Jim Broadbent

Synopsis: In the Irish town of Kilshannon in the 1920s, a matriarchal clique of widows tightly sets the rules for behavior. Heading the town's ruling circle is the doughty Mrs. Counihan (Joan Plowright). The only non-widow in town is a reclusive middle-aged spinster, Miss O'Hare (Mia Farrow), who seems to Read More

The Summer House

Actors: Jeanne Moreau, Joan Plowright, Julie Walters, Lena Headey, David Threlfall

Synopsis: Martin Sherman adapted Alice Thomas Ellis' novel for this comedy about a suburban Englishwoman who's about to settle on marriage with her mother-dominated next door neighbor until everyone's comfortable life is disrupted by a visit from her exotic and flamboyant friend Lili (Jeanne Moreau, in a Read More

Last Action Hero

Actors: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austin O'Brien, F. Murray Abraham, Art Carney, Frank McRae, Anthony Quinn, Charles Dance, Mercedes Ruehl

Synopsis: Arnold Schwarzenegger appears as a pumped-up Shakespearian hero while an announcer bellows, "Something is rotten in Denmark -- and Hamlet is taking out the trash!" This gag sets the stage for the post-modernist action epic The Last Action Hero. The film concerns Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien), a Read More

Dennis the Menace

Actors: Walter Matthau, Mason Gamble, Joan Plowright, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson

Synopsis: John Hughes continues the trend he began with the Home Alone series in Dennis the Menace, the Hughes-scripted film version of Hank Ketcham's long-running comic strip, cartoon show, and television comedy. The film opens as Dennis (Mason Gamble) is seen careening down a sidewalk in a beautiful and Read More

Enchanted April

Actors: Miranda Richardson, Joan Plowright, Josie Lawrence, Alfred Molina, Polly Walker, Michael Kitchen

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1935 with Ann Harding, Enchanted April, a romantic novel by Elizabeth, was remade in 1992. The first film skips along superficially at 66 minutes: the second, directed by the always intriguing Mike Newell, runs 101 minutes, allowing for richer characterizations and a Read More

Stalin

Actors: Robert Duvall, Julia Ormond, Jeroen Krabbé, Joan Plowright, Maximilian Schell

Synopsis: The made-for-cable film Stalin relates the story of the ruthless Soviet dictator and his tyrannical rule. Robert Duvall gives an excellent performance as the dictator and the photography is beautiful, as are the sets, since much of the movie was shot on location in Russia. The screenplay also does Read More

And a Nightingale Sang

Actors: Tom Watt, Phyllis Logan, Joan Plowright, John Woodvine

Synopsis: Originally aired on the Masterpiece Theatre television series and set in Great Britain towards the end of WW II, this romantic drama chronicles the sacrifices made by a blue-collar woman and her family. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Avalon

Actors: Armin Mueller-Stahl, Eve Gordon, Aidan Quinn, Elizabeth Perkins, Lou Jacobi, Leo L. Fuchs, Joan Plowright, Elijah Wood

Synopsis: The third of director Barry Levinson's autobiographical "Baltimore Trilogy" (the first two entries were Diner and Tin Men), Avalon covers nearly forty years in the lives of an immigrant Jewish family. Sam Krichinsky (Armin Mueller-Stahl) emigrates to Baltimore in 1914, where Sam's brothers Gabriel Read More

I Love You to Death

Actors: Kevin Kline, Tracey Ullman, Joan Plowright, River Phoenix, William Hurt, Keanu Reeves, Miriam Margolyes

Synopsis: Lawrence Kasdan's black comedy about a wife's ultimate revenge against her womanizing husband is based on a true story about the wife of a pizzeria owner who decided to kill her cheating husband. When her attempt to murder him failed, the husband refused to press charges against her because he Read More

The Dressmaker

Actors: Joan Plowright, Billie Whitelaw, Jane Horrocks, Tim Ransom

Synopsis: The brilliant young British actress Jane Horrocks made her film debut in The Dressmaker. She plays Rita, the 17-year-old niece of two Liverpool sisters, who are united only by a common hatred. Older sister Nellie (Joan Plowright) is an emotionally repressed dressmaker, while Margo (Billie Read More

Drowning by Numbers

Actors: Bernard Hill, Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson, Joely Richardson, Jason Edwards

Synopsis: Peter Greenaway wrote and directed this typically surreal and iconoclastic black comedy. Three generations of women who share the same name -- 63-year-old Cissie Colpitts (Joan Plowright), her daughter Cissie Colpitts II (Juliet Stevenson), and granddaughter Cissie Colpitts III (Joely Richardson) Read More

Sophie

Synopsis: A man and his mother recall his youth. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

A Dedicated Man

Synopsis: When a workaholic businessman needs to be married to maintain a good image, he asks a woman to pose as his wife. The film is a British production originally made for The Romance Theatre. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide Read More

Revolution

Actors: Al Pacino, Donald Sutherland, Nastassja Kinski, Joan Plowright, Steven Berkoff

Synopsis: This period drama about the American Revolution has an overlay of rhetoric that thwarts the action, flattening out the story about a man and his loved ones caught up in the events of the time. Tom Dobb (Al Pacino) falls in love with Daisy McConnahay (Nastassja Kinski), an aristocrat who deserts Read More

Wagner

Actors: Richard Burton, Vanessa Redgrave, Laszlo Galffi, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson

Synopsis: Originally a nine-hour British miniseries, this film on the last four decades in the life of Richard Wagner may have taken its long-winded cue from the lengthy operas of the famous 19th-century German composer and musical theorist -- the Ring des Nibelungen is 14-15 hours in itself, divided into Read More

Britannia Hospital

Actors: Leonard Rossiter, Graham Crowden, Malcolm McDowell, Joan Plowright, Jill Bennett

Synopsis: This dark comedy charts the chaos that results when the panicked staff of a major English hospital attempts to prepare for a visit by the Queen Mother, only to face every problem imaginable. Britannia Hospital clearly attempts to recapture the anarchic bite of director Lindsay Anderson's previous Read More

Brimstone and Treacle

Actors: Sting, Denholm Elliott, Joan Plowright, Suzanna Hamilton

Synopsis: The arrival of a mysterious stranger disrupts the lives of the members of a British family in this dark, psychological thriller. The stranger is one Martin Taylor (Sting), a dangerous charmer who ingratiates himself with the Bateses, a dignified, older couple (Denholm Elliott and Joan Plowright). Read More

The Diary of Anne Frank

Actors: Melissa Gilbert, Maximilian Schell, Joan Plowright, Doris Roberts, James Coco

Synopsis: The diary of teenaged Holocaust victim Anne Frank was first published in book form in 1952, then adapted into a Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett two years later. Director George Stevens converted The Diary of Anne Frank into a film in 1959, an effort which Read More

Daphne Laureola

Synopsis: Sir Laurence Olivier stars in this film about a group of people in a Soho restaurant who are all invited by a boisterous woman to a tea at her husband's home. Enraptured by the woman is an elderly businessman who may find that things with this enchanting woman may not be what they seem. ~ Cammila Read More

Equus

Actors: Richard Burton, Peter Firth, Colin Blakely, Joan Plowright, Harry Andrews

Synopsis: Richard Burton plays a psychiatrist who attempts to discover why young Peter Firth has taken to mutilating live horses. In probing Firth's psyche, Burton discovers that the source of the boy's obsession is his mother, Joan Plowright, who has raised Firth with a convoluted set of values. Even as he Read More

Merchant of Venice

Actors: Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright, Anthony Nicholls, Jeremy Brett

Synopsis: Olivier stars in this production of the Shakespearean tragedy about greed and vengeance. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Three Sisters

Actors: Jeanne Watts, Joan Plowright, Louise Pumell, Derek Jacobi

Synopsis: Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's three upper-class Prozorov sisters -- Masha, Olga, and Irina -- come no closer to their dream of returning to Moscow in director Laurence Olivier's 1970 film version of Three Sisters than they did in Chekhov's original 1900 play. This melancholy classic about Read More

Twelfth Night

Actors: Alec Guinness, Tommy Steele, Ralph Richardson, Joan Plowright, Adrienne Corri

Synopsis: This televised adaptation of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, originally screened on Britain's ITV in 1969, stars Alec Guinness, Tommy Steele, Joan Plowright and Sir Ralph Richardson in the principal roles. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide Read More

School for Scandal

Synopsis: This Victorian comedy is a British television adaptation of Richard Sheridan's then famous play. The story is set in Lady Sneerwell's salon where the social elite gather for entertaining hours of gossip and backstabbing. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Uncle Vanya

Synopsis: This version of Chekov's classic play was recorded at the 1963 Chichester Festival. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Entertainer

Actors: Laurence Olivier, Brenda de Banzie, Joan Plowright, Roger Livesey, Alan Bates, Albert Finney

Synopsis: Laurence Olivier recreates his stage role of Archie Rice in this in-your-face film adaptation of John Osborne's play. The son of a legendary music hall comedian (Roger Livesey), Archie is strictly a third-rater, headlining a tacky music hall revue in a seedy seaside resort town. Archie can't admit Read More

Time Without Pity

Actors: Michael Redgrave, Ann Todd, Leo McKern, Peter Cushing, Alec McCowen

Synopsis: Time Without Pity carried the name "Joseph Losey" on the credits -- the first time in three years that the blacklisted director was permitted to use his own name on a film. This British-made suspense film was based on a play by Emlyn Williams. Michael Redgrave stars an anguished father whose son (Alec McCowan Read More

Moby Dick

Actors: Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart, Leo Genn, Harry Andrews, Seamus Kelly, Orson Welles

Synopsis: Previous film versions of Moby Dick insisted upon including such imbecilities as romantic subplots and happy endings. John Huston's 1956 Moby Dick remains admirably faithful to its source. "Call me Ishmael" declares itinerant whaler Richard Basehart as the opening credits fade. Though slightly Read More

The Comedy of Errors

And a Nightingale Sang