Jane Elizabeth Marie Lapotaire was a renowned stage actress of French ancestry, born in Ipswich, England. Her childhood was marked by turmoil, as she was abandoned by her mother at six months old and never knew her father. She was fostered by a woman named Granny Grace, who had raised her biological mother.
Lapotaire's early life was complicated by her mother's return when she was 12, but she chose to remain with Granny Grace. Her mother and her partner disapproved of her acting ambitions, but she pursued them nonetheless.
She was accepted into the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and studied acting from 1961 to 1963. She made her professional debut with the Old Vic Theatre Company in 1963 and later joined the National Theatre under the direction of Laurence Olivier.
Lapotaire was a founding member of the Young Vic Theatre and played a range of classical roles, including Katharina in The Taming of the Shrew and Jocasta in Oedipus. She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1974 and toured with them in Henry VIII.
Her most famous role is perhaps Édith Piaf, which she created in 1978 and transferred to Broadway in 1981, winning her a Best Actress Tony Award. She has also appeared in numerous television shows and films, including period dramas and adaptations of literary classics.
Lapotaire has written several memoirs, including Grace and Favour and Everybody's Daughter, Nobody's Child, which detail her difficult childhood. She has also written about her recovery from a cerebral hemorrhage in her book Time Out of Mind.
As she said in a 2015 interview, "Being a classical actor is a vocation - you don't do it to be famous or get rich. You do it because you love the language."
