LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess) — Glynis Johns, a British actor best known for her role as Mrs. Winifred Banks in the classic Disney film “Marry Poppins,” has died. She was 100.
Johns’ manager, Mitch Clem, told the Associated Press that she died of natural causes at an assisted living home in Los Angeles on Thursday.
“Today’s a sad day for Hollywood,” Clem told the Associated Press “She is the last of the last of old Hollywood.”
With a career that spanned eight decades, Johns made her theatrical ‘debut’ at the tender age of three weeks old when her grandmother, the noted violinist Elizabeth Steele-Payne carried her onto a London stage.
She made her screen debut in 1938 when she was cast, at the age of 16, when she was cast as Midge Carne in Victor Saville’s film adaptation of the Winifred Holtby novel South Riding.
Her other film roles include 49th Parallel (1941), Helter Skelter (1949), The Sundowners (1960), The Cabinet of Caligari (1962), Mary Poppins (1964), and the South African Sci-fi epic Nukie (1987).
She was married and divorced four times but outlived all of her ex-husbands. Her son, Gareth Forwood, died in 2007 from cancer and a heart attack.
Her accolades include an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor in 1961 for Sundowners, a Tony Award in 1973 for best actress in a musical for her part in Hugh Wheeler’s A Little Night Music, and a National Board of Review best acting award for 49th Parallel.
