Jacqueline Chan, the actor and dancer who has died at the age of 91, belonged to a generation of performing artists who navigated the early, often restrictive landscape of British post-war theatre and television.
Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, to a Chinese-Trinidadian family, Chan arrived in England as a teenager to pursue classical ballet. She quickly transitioned to the commercial stage, embarking on a career that would encompass West End musicals, Shakespearean drama, European art films, and early television serials.
To the broader British public in 1960, she became a figure of intense media scrutiny when newspapers identified her as the former partner and frequent model of the photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, immediately following the announcement of his engagement to Princess Margaret. Yet for theatre historians and her contemporaries, Chan’s significance lay in her quiet endurance and her firm refusal to accept roles she considered demeaning to her heritage.
From Trinidad to the West End Stage
The daughter of a photographer who had been an acrobat in his youth, Chan left Trinidad at sixteen to train at the Elmhurst Ballet School in Surrey. Though she initially intended to teach dance, she soon secured work as a principal dancer in regional pantomime before successfully auditioning for West End productions.
Her early stage credits included appearances in The Teahouse of the August Moon and The King and I. In 1958, she secured the role of Esther in Errol John’s Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at the Royal Court, a production celebrated for its realistic portrayal of Caribbean life.
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Chan’s mainstream breakthrough arrived with the stage adaptation of The World of Suzie Wong at the Prince of Wales Theatre. Initially cast in a supporting role, she took over the lead character of Gwennie Lee during the London run and later starred in the Australian tour. Her performance earned critical praise for bringing a delicate dignity to a role that could easily have slid into caricature.
A Career in the Public Eye
The media attention surrounding Armstrong-Jones’s royal wedding briefly turned Chan into a tabloid celebrity. The photographer had captured numerous portraits of Chan during their relationship in the late 1950s, including a well-known image of her walking past soldiers in Venice. Chan attended the wedding at Westminster Abbey, remaining a supportive friend to the photographer for decades. Decades later, the early chapters of their lives were dramatised in the television series The Crown.
The momentum from her stage success transitioned into steady television work. She appeared alongside a young Sean Connery in Giles Cooper’s 1960 television play Without the Grail, and later secured a role as a handmaiden in the 1963 film epic Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor.
Over the next twenty years, Chan became a familiar face on British television screens, appearing in popular series such as The Saint, Emergency – Ward 10, and Reilly: Ace of Spies.
Resisting the Stereotype
Throughout her career, Chan remained highly conscious of the limitations placed on East Asian performers in Britain. In her youth, the roles available were largely restricted to poorly written, subservient characters.
“I used to say to myself, ‘I’m not doing any parts where I have to say “flied lice” instead of “fried rice,”‘” Chan remarked in an interview later in life. “If I felt they were demeaning to my race, I wouldn’t do it.”
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This principle guided her choices as the industry slowly evolved. In 1986, she co-founded the Pan Cultural Performance Project to encourage multicultural casting and writing in British theatre.
Her commitment to visibility bore fruit in 2017, when she performed in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Snow in Midsummer. The staging featured an entirely East and Southeast Asian heritage cast, a milestone that followed years of activism by minority actors protesting the lack of representation in classical theatre.
Chan continued to work well into her later years, appearing in the 2018 Alan Bennett play Allelujah! at the Bridge Theatre and taking a role in the Disney film Cruella in 2021. Her final screen performance will appear in the upcoming film Supergirl, scheduled for release this summer, concluding a seventy-year contribution to British cultural life.
