Rachel Roberts

Welsh actress

Written and fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Last updated

Sep. 16, 2026 •History

Rachel Roberts (born September 20, 1927, Llanelli, Carmathenshire, Wales—died November 26, 1980, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) was a Welsh actress probably best known for her British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award-winning performance as Brenda—an unhappily married woman who becomes pregnant with another man’s child—in the Karel Reisz film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). She also won BAFTAs for best actress in Lindsay Anderson’s This Sporting Life (1963) and best supporting actress in John Schlesinger’s Yanks (1979).

Roberts studied at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (1945), and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (1948–50). She acted in classic roles at the Old Vic, in Stratford, and at the Bristol Old Vic, but some of her most outstanding theatrical performances were in modern parts, in the musical Maggie May in 1964, in Alpha Beta in 1972, and in John Osborne’s The End of Me Old Cigar in 1975. Her other memorable films include Anderson’s O Lucky Man (1973), Sidney Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975).

From 1962 to 1971, Roberts was married to British actor Rex Harrison, with whom she acted in A Flea in Her Ear (1968); it was his fourth and her second marriage. Roberts also acted in a number of made-for-television movies and several TV series, notably the BBC’s Our Mutual Friend (1958–59), based on the novel of the same name by Charles Dickens, and The Tony Randall Show (1976–78). Never having quite reconciled herself with her divorce from Harrison, in 1980 she took her own life. The posthumously published No Bells on Sunday (1984), a biography-memoir edited by British film critic Alexander Walker, includes the actress’s journal entries from the last three years of her life.