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Lou Gish was a talented and spirited actress, known for her natural grace and sharp comedic timing. The daughter of actors Roland Curram and Sheila Gish, she showcased her versatility in her final two stage performances.
In January of last year, at the intimate Gate Theatre in Notting Hill, west London, she portrayed General Pinochet's Spanish lawyer in Thea Sharrock's compelling promenade production of Fermín Cabal's Tejas Verdas (Green Gables), a poignant tribute to Chilean torture victims. The previous summer, she took on the role of Goneril in Steven Pimlott's clear and powerful rendition of King Lear, alongside David Warner, at the Minerva Theatre in Chichester.
In the former, she was sleek, calm, and confident. In the latter, she electrified the stage, dramatically casting aside a Bible offered by a distressed Albany (Raad Rawi) and embodying her villainous schemes with a sinuous presence that contrasted strikingly with Zoe Waites's fiery Regan. Her younger sister, Kay Curram, portrayed Cordelia.
Lou and Kay were returning to Chichester partly to honor their mother's final stage appearance there—as Arkadina in The Seagull in 2003 (a production in which Kay played Nina)—but also to heal from the experience. True to form, they organized visits to the local bowling alley and playfully nicknamed their leading man "Dave"—"He's so not a Dave," they remarked. Warner described Lou as "a wonderful, positive presence, a superb actress whose spirit remained with us throughout the entire run." Unfortunately, she had to leave the production when her illness worsened.
Born and raised in London, Lou attended Macaulay church school, Alleyn's in Dulwich, and Furzedown school in Wandsworth before earning a degree at Camberwell School of Art. Initially considering journalism, she won a prize for an article she wrote for Harper's magazine as a student, and the editor, Beatrix Miller, had offered to hire her after graduation.
However, Lou chose a different path, taking a job at the agency of actors' agent Jeremy Conway, where she answered phones and served tea, sometimes humorously donning a waitress uniform. A role in a fringe production in Paddington led to her securing her own agent and a memorable cameo in Sean Mathias's 1994 revival of Noel Coward's Design for Living at the Donmar Warehouse. In this production, Rachel Weisz was a striking, moody Gilda, while Gish confidently portrayed Helen Carver, a shrill socialite in a dazzling gown.
When her parents separated (Sheila Gish later married actor and director Denis Lawson), Roland Curram solemnly told his daughters he was coming out as gay. Lou was unsurprised, noting, "He raised us on a diet of Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Barbra Streisand." Gish and Curram had met while working on the film Darling in the mid-1960s. Lou's godparents were the star and director Julie Christie and the late John Schlesinger—whom she described as the coolest people in the world.
In a second collaboration with Mathias, Lou played a mannish playwright and devoted assistant to Sian Phillips's Marlene Dietrich in Pam Gems's Marlene. She specialized in strong, yet marginalized romantic characters: at the Watford Palace in 1998, in Phyllis Nagy's skillful adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley, she portrayed Marge as a hilariously caught-in-the-middle figure. Later that year, she joined her stepfather Denis Lawson's production of Little Malcolm and his Struggle against the Eunuchs, starring Ewan McGregor, at the Hampstead Theatre and later in the West End. She played Ann, the feared and despised object of the men's misogyny—who suffers a brutal attack—with searing contempt.
In 1999, critic Michael Billington noted how Lou—slim, green-eyed, and dark-haired—illuminated the Chichester stage as a scorned fiancée in Maria Aitken's revival of Noel Coward's underrated comedy Easy Virtue. She was an impeccably chic, middle-class Helena in Look Back in Anger at the Bristol Old Vic in 2001, and an effortlessly aristocratic Duchess of Malfi at Salisbury Playhouse the following year. Regarding the latter role, Alastair Macaulay wrote in the Financial Times, "She doesn't invite us into her tragedy; we are riveted by it from a distance."
Over the last decade of her life, Gish appeared frequently on television in series such as The Thin Blue Line (1995), EastEnders (1985), Casualty, Doctors (2000), Wire in the Blood, Coupling (2000), and Where the Heart Is.
She passed away from cancer at 38, survived by her partner, actor Nicholas Rowe, as well as her father, stepfather, and sister.
