Patricia Neal (January 20, 1926 – August 8, 2010) was an American actress of stage and screen. She was best known for her film roles as World War II widow Helen Benson in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), wealthy matron Emily Eustace Failenson in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), and the worn-out housekeeper Alma Brown in Hud (1963), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She played Olivia Walton in the 1971 made-for-television film The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, a role played in the regular series by actress Michael Learned.

Biography

During the filming of The Fountainhead (1949), Neal began an affair with her married co-star, Gary Cooper, whom she had met in 1947 when she was 21 and he was 46. At one point in their relationship, Cooper slapped Neal in the face after he caught Kirk Douglas trying to seduce her. A few months later, Neal hoped that tempers would cool while she went to London, England, to film The Hasty Heart, starring Ronald Reagan. Reagan was unhappy over his breakup with Jane Wyman, adding to what would be a depressing shoot for Neal.



Neal met British writer Roald Dahl at a dinner party hosted by Lillian Hellman in 1951. They married on July 2, 1953, at Trinity Church in New York. The marriage produced five children: Olivia Twenty (April 20, 1955 – November 17, 1962); Chantal Sophia "Tessa" (b. 1957); Theo Matthew (b. 1960); Ophelia Magdalena (b. 1964); and Lucy Neal (b. 1965). Her granddaughter is author, television presenter and model Sophie Dahl.

In the early 1960s, the couple suffered through grievous injury to one child and the death of another. On December 5, 1960, their son Theo, four months old, suffered brain damage when his baby carriage was struck by a taxicab in New York City. In May 1961, the family returned to Gipsy House in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, where Theo continued his rehabilitation. Neal would later describe the two years of family life during Theo's recovery as one of the most beautiful periods of her life. However, on November 17, 1962, their daughter, Olivia, died at age 7 from measles encephalitis.

While pregnant in 1965, Neal suffered three burst cerebral aneurysms, and was in a coma for three weeks. Dahl directed her rehabilitation and she subsequently relearned to walk and talk ("I think I'm just stubborn, that's all"). On August 4, 1965, she gave birth to a healthy daughter, Lucy.

Neal and Dahl's marriage ended in divorce in 1983. In 1981, Glenda Jackson played her in a television movie, The Patricia Neal Story which co-starred Dirk Bogarde as Neal's husband Dahl. Neal's autobiography, As I Am, was published in 1988. In later years, Neal became a Catholic.

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