Goldie Semple, Canadian Stage Great, Dies at 56

By Robert Simonson
10 Dec 2009

Goldie Semple
Goldie Semple

Actor Goldie Semple, a veteran of the Stratford and Shaw festivals, died Dec. 9 after a long battle with breast cancer, the Globe and Mail reported. She was 56.

Ms. Semple was to act at the Shaw's Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, stage this coming summer, playing Madame Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard.

Over 17 seasons, she appeared in many shows at the Shaw Festival, including William Inge's Picnic, Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, Shaw's Major Barbara and Candida, and (this past summer) Noel Coward's Tonight at 8:30. She made her debut at the Festival in 1981 in the title role of Camille.

A statuesque beauty with curly red hair, Ms. Semple also spent nine seasons at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, often opposite actor Colm Feore, playing out the eternal battle of the sexes as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing and Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew. She was Lady Macbeth to Brian Bedford's Macbeth, and also played Cleopatra in Anthony and Cleopatra.

"Goldie Semple's Hermione is a woman of intelligence and stature," wrote the Globe and Mail, reviewing her performances in Winter's Tale. "Semple's onstage personality tends to be mischievous and suited to comedy, but she subordinates these tendencies in this play. They are still there. However, instead of undermining her queenly demeanor, they humanize it and make it easy to understand why her husband loves her."

"The loss of Goldie is inestimable — for both the Shaw Festival and the Canadian theatre community, of which she was such a celebrated and beloved member," Shaw Festival artistic director Jackie Maxwell said Dec. 10.

Maxwell praised Ms. Semple as an "extraordinary actress and woman of the theatre who combined an unequalled grace, beauty and elegance with a deep passion and, so delightful when you got to know her, a surprisingly wicked sense of humour and ultimate pragmatism. ... We celebrate her as a great actress, mentor, teacher, company member, friend and supporter to so many of us."

She was born in Richmond, BC, and studied theatre at the University of British Columbia, then at the Bristol Old Vic in England. She leaves her husband of 33 years, fellow Shaw ensemble member Lorne Kennedy, and their daughter Madeline, 14.