Actress Jean Simmons dies in California
British actress Jean Simmons, who starred opposite Laurence Olivier in "Hamlet" during a career spanning 60 years, has died in California, Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday.
Simmons, who was 80 and had lung cancer, died at her home in Santa Monica on Friday night, it quoted her agent Judy Page as saying.
Born in London, Simmons started acting in films as a teenager and later moved to the United States to star in movies such as the 1955 musical "Guys and Dolls" with Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra, and Stanley Kubrick's "Spartacus" with Kirk Douglas in 1960.
Simmons won a best supporting actress Oscar nomination for playing Ophelia in "Hamlet" in 1948 and a best actress nomination for her role in "The Happy Ending" -- a 1969 film directed by her second husband Richard Brooks.
Her marriage to Brooks ended in divorce in 1977. She married Brooks in 1960, months after divorcing actor Stewart Granger.
"As a 14-year-old dance student she was plucked from her school to play Margaret Lockwood's precocious sister in 'Give Us the Moon' (1944)," according to a biography of the actress on IMDb.COM movies website.
By the 1980s, she mainly appeared in TV mini-series and won an Emmy for her role in "The Thorn Birds" in 1983.