Lou Gish Actress of intelligence and grit, dies at 38
The Independent Online
Louise Curram (Lou Gish), actress: born London 27 May 1967; died London 20 February 2006.
In person Lou Gish, who has died of cancer aged only 38, was beautiful, funny, kind, affectionate, and astonishingly popular. As an actress she was multiply talented.
Last year - following the death in March, also from cancer (aged 62), of her mother, Sheila Gish - she played Goneril in Steven Pimlott’s King Lear at Chichester Festival Theatre. Her sister, Kay Curram, was Cordelia. Anyone who saw the performance will never forget it: in figure-hugging black, green eyes glinting from beneath a ton of black mascara, Lou Gish smouldered on to the stage. As she opened her mouth and purred to David Warner, “Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter . . .”, there cannot have been a spine in the audience without a shiver down it. Gish was heartbroken when her cancer returned and, in June, she had to withdraw from the production.
She was born in London in 1967 to the actors Sheila Gish and Roland Curram, and educated at Macaulay Church of England Primary School in Clapham, Alleyns School in Dulwich, Furzedown School in Wandsworth, and Camberwell School of Art. After leaving Camberwell she worked in a variety of jobs (for a while as an assistant for the theatrical agent Jeremy Conway), and it was not until her mid-twenties that she decided to follow the instinct that she said she had been trying to ignore: to become an actress.
Thereafter she was in work almost constantly, in both theatre and television. As Helen Carver in Design for Living at the Donmar and in the West End, she literally dazzled the audience in what one critic described as a “glittering sheath”. When, in 1988-89, she played Ann to Ewan McGregor’s eponymous hero in Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs she showed grit and vulnerability in equal measure, reducing many of the audience to tears as she crawled, weeping, across the stage in the final moments of the play, having been beaten up by Malcolm and his gang of weak-willed politicos.
She and her partner of six years, the actor Nicholas Rowe, were completely devoted. Lou took particular pleasure in arranging (surprise) events for Nick’s birthday each year. Such heartfelt and sincere devotion was a lesson in love for all who beheld it.
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