Julia Neilson

Julia Neilson
Nielson in Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall, 1907
Born	(1868-06-12)12 June 1868 St Pancras, London, England
Died	27 May 1957(1957-05-27) (aged 88) Hampstead, London, England
Nationality	British
Occupation	Actress

Julia Emilie Neilson (12 June 1868 – 27 May 1957) was an English actress best known for her numerous performances as Lady Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel, for her roles in many tragedies and historical romances, and for her portrayal of Rosalind in a long-running production of As You Like It.

After establishing her reputation in a series of plays by W. S. Gilbert in 1888, Neilson joined the company of Herbert Beerbohm Tree, where she remained for five years, meeting her future husband, Fred Terry (brother to actresses Kate, Ellen, Marion and Florence Terry and great uncle of John Gielgud). With Terry, she played in London and on tour for nearly three decades. She was the mother of the actress Phyllis Neilson-Terry and actor Dennis Neilson-Terry.

Neilson was born in London, the only child of Alexander Ritchie Neilson, a jeweller, and his wife, Emilie Davis, a member of a family of five Jewish sisters, many of whose offspring became actresses. Neilson's parents divorced shortly after her birth, and her father soon died, leaving her mother to struggle to support her child. Her mother much later married a solicitor, William Morris, the widower of the actress Florence Terry, elder sister of the actor Fred Terry, who had, by that time, married Neilson.

Neilson was an indifferent student. At the age of twelve, she was sent to a boarding school in Wiesbaden, Germany, where she learned to speak French and German and began to study music, discovering that she excelled at this. She returned to England to enter the Royal Academy of Music in 1884, at the age of fifteen, to study piano. She soon discovered that she had a talent as a singer, winning the Llewellyn Thomas Gold Medal (1885), the Westmoreland Scholarship (1886) and the Sainton Dolby Prize (1886). While at the Academy, in 1887, she sang at the St James's Hall and also played roles in amateur theatre.