Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 14, 2025
Josette Simon (born 1959 / 1960) is a British actor. She trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London and played the part of Dayna Mellanby in the third and fourth series of the television sci-fi series Blake's 7 from 1980 to 1981. She was the first black woman in a Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) play when she appeared in Salvation Now in 1982, and has been at the forefront of colour-blind casting, playing roles traditionally taken by white actors, including Maggie, a character that is thought to be based on Marilyn Monroe, in Arthur Miller's After the Fall in 1990. Simon's first leading role at the RSC, the first principal part filled by a black woman for the company, was as Rosaline, in Love's Labour's Lost in 1984. Simon won the Evening Standard's Best Actress award, a Critics' Circle Theatre Award, Plays and Players Critic Awards and two film festival awards. She was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2000, for services to drama. (Full article...)