Penelope Gilliatt died on May 9, 1993, in London at age 61, following struggles with alcoholism in her final years.
Penelope Gilliatt died on May 9, 1993, in London at the age of 61. Her death came after a period of declining health that friends and colleagues attributed in part to long-standing struggles with alcoholism, which had also affected her productivity and professional relationships in her later career, including her departure from The New Yorker.
Obituaries in major publications, including The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, remembered her chiefly as a distinguished film critic for The New Yorker from 1968 to 1979, where she shared reviewing duties with Pauline Kael, and as the screenwriter of Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
Her passing marked the end of a career notable for its versatility: she had been a novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer of Jacques Tati and Katharine Hepburn's collaborator Conrad, and one of the most incisive film critics of her era. Despite personal difficulties later in life, her critical writing continued to be respected for its literary sophistication and wit, and her contribution to Anglo-American film criticism and to the celebrated cinema of the New Hollywood era, particularly through her partnership with director John Schlesinger, remains part of her enduring legacy.