Legendary screen actress Jean Simmons, who appeared with the top Hollywood male actors, has died at the age of 80. Read more on Jean Simmons’ death below.

Jean Simmons, who appeared with Marlon Brando, Gregory Peck, Paul Newman, Kirk Douglas, and others died of lung cancer at her home in Santa Monica, California. Simmons was 80 years-old.

Simmons was nominated as best supporting actress in 1948 for her role in “Hamlet.”  And she was nominated for another Oscar for best actress for “The Happy Ending” in 1969.

Jean Simmons also won an Emmy for her role in “The Thorn Birds” in the 1980’s.

Simmons left her native England for Hollywood in 1950, accompanied by her future husband Stewart Granger. Simmons and Granger were friends with the reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes who flew them to Tuscon for their wedding.

“When I returned from the honeymoon,” Simmons told a reporter in 1964, “I learned that Hughes owned me — he had bought me from (British producer) J. Arthur Rank like a piece of meat.”

Simmons did a string of bad movies but was thankful womanizer Howard Hughes didn’t make any passes at ehr.

“I was married to Jimmy (Granger’s real name was James Stewart), so Hughes remained at a distance,” she recalled. “But those movies! So terrible they aren’t even on videocassettes.”

Simmons finally ended up suing Hughes for the right to other films at other studios.  She went on to play in the movie “Guys and Dolls” in 1955 with Marlon Brando.

“I got to sing,” she added, “because Sam Goldwyn said, `You might as well wreck it with your own voice than somebody else’s.’”

In the 1980s and ’90s Simmons made appearances on television programs such as “Murder, She Wrote,” “In the Heat of the Night” and “Xena: Warrior Princess.”

Jean Simmons and her  husband Granger divorced in 1960 and had one daughter, Tracy.

Shortly after her divorce, Simmons married Richard Brooks, who had directed her in “Elmer Gantry” and would again in “The Happy Ending.”  They had a daughter named Kate, and they divorced in 1977.

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images: wenn.com

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