Nora Noel Jill Bennett (24 December 1926 – 4 October 1990) was a British actress.
Early life and education
Jill Bennett was born in Penang, the Straits Settlements, to "wealthy Scottish parents" who owned a rubber plantation. She was educated at Prior's Field School, an independent girls boarding school in Godalming, from which she was expelled when she was fourteen. She attended RADA from 1944 to 1946.
She co-starred with Rachel Roberts in the Alan Bennett<!-- Correct UK usage for this work. --> television play The Old Crowd (1979), directed by Lindsay Anderson.
Personal life
Bennett was the live-in companion of actor Godfrey Tearle in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She was married to screenwriter Willis Hall and later to John Osborne. Bennett and Osborne divorced, acrimoniously, in 1978. She had no children.
Death
Bennett died by suicide on 4 October 1990, aged 63, having long suffered from depression and the brutalising effects of her marriage to Osborne (according to Osborne's biographer). She did this by taking an overdose of Quinalbarbitone. Her death took place at home, 23 Gloucester Walk, Kensington, London W8, and she left an estate valued at
£596,978.
Osborne, who was subject during her life to a restraining order regarding written comments about her, immediately wrote a vituperative chapter about her to be added to the second volume of his autobiography. The chapter, in which he rejoiced at her death, caused great controversy.