Wilde Women: The Actresses of Oscar©

The most famous actress of her generation, Sarah Bernhardt performed in more than 125 plays over her 60-year career. She was described by novelist Victor Hugo as “the golden voice” and was famous for her dramatic death scenes that culminated in a devastating “spiral” of emotion. She took on both female and male roles and stayed at the cutting edge of her craft throughout her career, starring in several silent movies, and in 1900, was the first actor to ever play Hamlet on film.

Bernhardt was just as big a creative force off-stage as on. Not only was she a 19th-century “it girl”, but she also painted, designed clothes and costumes, wrote plays, poems, and memoirs, and produced and directed many of her own theatrical productions. Bernhardt ran the Paris Renaissance Theatre from 1843 – 1899 before leasing her own venue in the city of lights and renaming it Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt. A talented sculptor, Bernhardt worked in bronze, marble and ceramics, and exhibited her pieces in the 1874 Paris Salon and the Exposition Universelle in 1900.

Acutely aware of her own power as a celebrity, Bernhardt regularly posed for artists, ensuring that her likeness would be seen worldwide in paintings, photographs, sculptures and films. Bernhart was also the inspiration for some of the most famous designs of the Art Nouveau movement and acted as muse and benefactor for contemporary artists and writers.

Bernhardt first met Wilde in 1879 while performing Phedre in London, the tragic role depicted in Oscar©. In her memoir Sarah Bernhardt: My Erotic Life, she describes how nervous she was performing for a "daunting" English audience and how meeting Wilde that night put her at ease.

“I nearly said, ‘Say something witty to me, Monsieur Wilde,’ and he must have read my mind.

‘One member of the Comédie Française visiting England is agreeable, two delightful, three, stupendous, but to have Sarah Bernhardt as well, is … words fail me. Madame, you are divine!’ And so it was that, although I’m sure I don’t deserve it, people began to call me "La Divine Sarah". This appellation would stick, I have exulted in it, and I owe it to Monsieur Wilde.”

Wilde came to see her perform nearly every night of her London engagement and the two corresponded for years. They collaborated on a stage adaptation of Salome, inspired by the iridescent painting by Gustave Moreau. Sadly, by the time it premiered in Paris in 1896 Wilde was serving a two-year prison sentence and could not see their dream realised.

Bernhardt had a colourful romantic life and was infamous for her collection of exotic pets including a boa constrictor, wolf, monkey, cheetah and a baby alligator. She enjoyed hosting dramatic seances in her home, and often slept (and, if the stories are to be believed, entertained suitors) in a satin lined rosewood coffin, claiming it helped her prepare for her dramatic roles. When she died in 1923 it was said that one million people lined the streets of Paris to bid adieu to her coffin, one final standing ovation for The Divine Sarah.

Born on the island of Jersey in 1853, Lillie Langtry was a famous and influential beauty who would later become known as ‘The Jersey Lily’.

After marrying a Belfast ship owner at 19, she rose to prominence in society circles for her beauty, style, and friendships with interesting cultural figures. Langtry worked as a model for noted London artists, becoming a favourite muse for the pre-Raphaelite movement. One painting of her – the eponymous A Jersey Lily by John Everett Millais – was so striking that when exhibited at the Royal Academy it had to be roped off to avoid being damaged by the bustling crowds.

Langtry’s infamous reputation reached new heights when she gained the attention of The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and the two began an affair. When they parted ways (allegedly after she put ice down his collar during a stuffy dinner) she needed a way to support herself.

Langtry first became friends with Wilde in 1877, and he and Sarah Bernhardt suggested that she exploit her notoriety to pursue a life in theatre. Debuting in a production of She Stoops to Conquer in 1881, Langtry caused a sensation as the first society woman to perform on stage. Capitalising on her fame, she formed her own theatre company and toured the United States several times. She invested her money in racehorses and real estate and was eventually wealthy enough to divorce her husband and return home to England.

In 1891 as her grand London return, she leased the Princes Theatre and starred in Antony and Cleopatra. Her performance as Cleopatra, as depicted in Oscar©, was a triumph. The Telegraph named her “the finest Cleopatra of our time” and the audience at the first performance was so entranced they made her give 14 curtain calls.

A Victorian-era influencer, Langtry sold her image and signature to the advertisements of soaps and lozenges. Tiffany and Co. designed a belt buckle to celebrate her 1901 American tour and London society tried to emulate her fashion style wearing the ‘Langtry knot’ and the ‘Langtry shoe’.

Langtry is also credited with creating one of the most famous theatre traditions – the red carpet. Growing tired of her costume’s hem getting dirty backstage, she asked a theatre manager to lay a carpet from her dressing room to the stage that she could walk on. The carpet he had just happened to be red, and her influence was such that the tradition of rolling out the red carpet continues to this day.

Dame Ellen Terry GBE was one of the most beloved and prolific actresses during the late 19th century. Her career on the stage began at just nine years old, as Mamillius in The Winter's Tale, beginning a love-affair with Shakespeare that would continue over her nearly 70-year career.

An outspoken and unapologetic woman, Terry’s lifestyle was a direct challenge to conventional Victorian morals. Married three times, Terry proudly acknowledged her two illegitimate children and publicly flaunted her long-term love affairs. Her first husband, the significantly older symbolist painter George Frederic Watts, offered her an allowance upon the dissolution of their marriage with the proviso that she stay off the stage - she didn’t take it. Her work as a model in his paintings made her a cult figure with painters and writers in the pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic circles, including Oscar Wilde.

As an actress, she was respected and admired for her naturalistic performances, upheld as an example of the newly developing “modern actress”. She was said to speak Shakespearean dialogue as if it were “her native tongue” and was once quoted as saying that the Elizabethan playwright was “the only man I ever loved”.

After Wilde saw her perform as Portia in A Merchant of Venice in 1875, he was inspired to write a sonnet in her honour. He sent it to her with the note:

"No actress has ever affected me as you have. I do not think you will ever have a more sincere an impassioned admirer than I am."

In 1878 she joined Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre, beginning a 20-year creative partnership as the leading Shakespearean actors in London. Her first role for the company was Hamlet’s Ophelia, as depicted in Oscar©. In addition to her love of the Bard, she used her influence to champion modern playwrights. In 1903 she took over management of London’s Imperial Theatre, focussing on the plays of modernist icons Bernard Shaw and Henrik Ibsen. A creative success, if not a financial one, Terry’s onstage career continued until 1920, and she appeared in films between 1916 to 1922. Coming full circle, her final full role on stage was a return to Shakespeare, as the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet in 1919.