Dawn Greenhalgh, Stratford Veteran and Voice of Queen Celeste, Dies at 93

Dawn Greenhalgh, a founding member of Canada's Stratford Festival and the voice of Queen Celeste on the animated series "Babar," died Nov. 6 in Toronto. She was 93.

Her career spanned seven decades and three coasts. She was 19 when she joined Stratford's founding company in 1953, and she later helped launch two more institutions: the Neptune Theatre in Halifax and Theatre Plus in Toronto. Few Canadian actors can claim three founding credits.

Where did it all begin?

Greenhalgh was born in Shanghai and spent her childhood with her family in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. There, she discovered a love of music, theater and dance — an unlikely conservatory, to put it mildly. At 14, she moved to Canada with only a guardian, attended Montreal High School and began performing.

In New York, she studied with Uta Haagen, Herbert Berghof and Mira Rostova, the coaching lineage that shaped a generation of American stage actors. She went on to perform on stages around the world.

What did audiences know her from?

Her Stratford performances included "All's Well That Ends Well" opposite Alec Guinness, plus "Antony and Cleopatra" and "Love's Labour's Lost." On screen, she appeared in Sofia Coppola's "The Virgin Suicides" and David Cronenberg's "Map to the Stars."

Her television credits ran wide:

• "Anne of Green Gables," where she worked with her daughter Megan Follows
• "Five Days at Memorial"
• "Saving Hope"
• "La Femme Nikita"

For younger viewers, she was simply Queen Celeste, wife of Babar the elephant, on the animated series "Babar." It's the kind of credit that outlives a résumé.

What did her colleagues say?

"Dawn Greenhalgh was a powerhouse, a dynamic, brilliant actress," Stratford Festival Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino wrote on Instagram. "As an extraordinary artist she could be both charming and unsettling. It was a pleasure to hear her perspective on plays and productions as it was informed by a lifetime of wide experience, a sparkling intellect and an independent, free thinking mind."

That tribute reads like a review of her whole career: charm, edge and independent judgment.

Greenhalgh is survived by her children Edwina Follows, Laurence Follows, Samantha Follows and Megan Follows, six grandchildren and two step-grandchildren. Her death closes a chapter on the generation that built Canada's regional theater from nothing — and her recorded work, from Shakespeare to Babar, keeps playing.