Zoe Ada Caldwell was born on September 14, 1933, in Hawthorn, Australia. She began her professional career at the age of 9 in a production of "Peter Pan." Her parents provided her with lessons in dance, elocution, and music, and she left school at age 15 to begin teaching speech and performing on a children's radio program.
Caldwell attended the Methodist Ladies College in Melbourne and was one of the original members of Melbourne's Union Theatre Repertory Company (1953) and the Elizabeth Theatre Trust (1954-1957). She built up her classical resume with numerous productions, including "Pericles," "Much Ado About Nothing," "Hamlet," "Twelfth Night," and "Romeo and Juliet."
She continued to hone her craft with roles in "Othello," "All's Well That Ends Well," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "King Lear," "Love's Labour's Lost," "Antigone," "Playboy of the Western World," and "Saint Joan."
In America, Caldwell helped launch the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis in 1963 with roles in "The Miser" and "The Three Sisters." She also appeared in "Mother Courage," "The Mad Woman of Chaillot," "The Way of the World," and "The Caucasian Chalk Circle."
Caldwell made her Broadway debut in 1965, replacing Anne Bancroft in "The Devils." She went on to receive four Tony Awards for her performances in "Slapstick Tragedy" (1966),"The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (1968),"Medea" (1982),and "Master Class" (1995).
In addition to her acting career, Caldwell was also a stage director, helming or assisting in productions of "An Almost Perfect Person" (1977),"Othello" (1982),"Macbeth" (1988),and "Park Your Car in Harvard Yard" (1991).
Caldwell avoided the silver screen almost completely, appearing in only three films during her lifetime: "The Purple Rose of Cairo" (1985),"Birth" (2004),and "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" (2011).
She and her husband, producer Robert Whitehead, maintained a long and successful private and professional partnership, having two children together. Caldwell passed away on February 16, 2020, at the age of 86, due to complications from Parkinson's disease.
