Celia Johnson - Legacy

Legacy

On 18 December 2008, to mark the centenary of her birth, a blue plaque was unveiled at her childhood home in Richmond. Among the guests at the ceremony were her daughters, Lucy Fleming and Kate Grimond.

In an article for The Times, Grimond noted that the "tragedy of theatre" is that even the best performances fade from memory, and that Johnson's current reputation rests almost entirely on her performance in Brief Encounter. She commented that the advent of video allowed the film to be seen by a new audience and that modern appraisals of the film had led to it being regarded as a classic, but that the renewed appreciation for Johnson's performance had started only shortly before her death. However, she remains one of the most iconoclastic women performers in British film history and certainly one of the most enduringly beautiful and remarkable screen sirens to have ever lived.