Career Highlights: Gigi, Heavens Above!, Fools for Scandal
First Major Screen Credit: Further Adventures of the Flag Lieutenant (1927)
Biography
British actress Isabel Jeans was 18 when she made her London stage debut in 1909. Her first film was 1917's The Profligate. The graceful, sophisticated Jeans became a Broadway critics' darling in the 1920s and 1930s by virtue of her performances in such plays as The Road to Rome and The Man in Possession. In Hollywood from 1937, Jeans was all too infrequently seen in plum character roles. She is most fondly remembered for her portrayal of the aunt of courtesan-in-training Leslie Caron in Gigi (1958). Isabel Jeans, who at one time was married to actor Claude Rains, made her farewell stage appearance in 1971, at the age of 80. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
She played a couple of major roles in two Alfred Hitchcocksilent films, Downhill (1927) and Easy Virtue (1928), before playing a number of grande dames in Hollywood films, such as Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941) and Gigi (1958). In 1968 she played a definitive Lady Bracknell in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest at London's Theatre Royal Haymarket, which ran for nine months to packed houses. Other members of the cast were Pauline Collins, Daniel Massey, Helen Weir, Robert Eddison and Dame Flora Robson.
Personal life
Jeans' brother Desmond was an actor and boxer, while her sister Ursula became a respected character actress and married the actor Roger Livesey.
She was twice married, both times to fellow actors: