Jean Higgs(1922-1993)
- Actress
Jean Higgs was born Jean Florence Taylor in Sale, Australia. Her
parents were Alice and William (a butcher). She grew up in a small
rural community. She worked as an infant teacher initially and
commenced acting in amateur theatre there. When she moved to Melbourne
Australia in the 1960s, she began working with semi-professional groups
such as the Ken Woodward players in Kew. During the early 1960s she
played the role of Mrs Whelan in the first movie directed by Phillip
Adams "Jack and Jill: a postscript", which won the inaugural Australian
Film Institute award for Best Picture in the fledgling days of the
Australian film industry. This was her only professional role, but she
continued to act and direct amateur theatre in Victoria and Queensland,
despite being legally blind in her later years. She particularly
promoted Australian playwrights, staging first amateur performances of
new Australian plays such as The Hope by Harry Reed. She was a founding
and lifetime member of the Sale Theatre Company with her husband Alan
Higgs. She died in 1993 aged 71 after a short struggle with kidney
cancer.