Dame Joan Plowright, Tony Award-winning British actor and widow of Laurence Olivier, dies at 95

Award-winning British actor Joan Plowright, who with her late husband Laurence Olivier did much to revitalize the U.K.'s theatrical scene in the decades after World War II, has died. She was 95.

In a statement Friday, her family said Plowright died the previous day at Denville Hall, a retirement home for actors in southern England, surrounded by her loved ones.

"She enjoyed a long and illustrious career across theatre, film and TV over seven decades until blindness made her retire," the family said. "We are so proud of all Joan did and who she was as a loving and deeply inclusive human being."