Georgina Cates, the British actress who reinvented herself to nab the lead female role in the Mike Newell-directed coming-of-age film An Awfully Big Adventure, has died. She was 51.
Cates died May 6, her daughter, Naiia, wrote weeks ago on Instagram, calling her “beautiful” and “free-spirited” and adding, “I love you, thank you for your creativity, curiosity and your bravery to always be true to yourself — no matter what.”
Her death had gone unreported. THR has reached out to family members and reps for further information.
Cates was married to American actor Skeet Ulrich (Scream, Riverdale) from 1997 until their 2005 divorce, and her survivors include Naiia and twin brother Jakob, born in 2001.
The actress also had a juicy central role as a cheating wife alongside Joaquin Phoenix and Vince Vaughn in the black comedy Clay Pigeons (1998), directed by David Dobkin.
In An Awfully Big Adventure (1995), adapted from Beryl Bainbridge’s 1990 novel of the same name, Cates sparkled as the impressionable Stella Bradshaw, who gets a job as an assistant at a Liverpool repertory theater troupe post-World War II and falls for director Meredith Potter (Hugh Grant) while actor P.L. O’Hara (Alan Rickman) falls for her.
After initially being rejected for the part after auditioning as Clare Woodgate — she had starred on the BBC sitcom 2point4 Children using her birth name — she tried again as Cates, creating the persona of a working-class teen from Liverpool, just like Stella. She also dyed her hair red and adopted a new accent to get hired.
“She was very bushy-tailed, eager, romantic, soulful, tough, very much like the character,” Newell said in a 1995 interview with The New York Times. “She even looked a bit like [Stella].” The filmmaker admitted to being conned and angry at first before realizing “it was good for show business.”
Georgina Cates with Alan Rickman in 1995’s An Awfully Big Adventure.
Courtesy of Everett Collection
Clare Elaine Woodgate was born on April 4, 1975, in Colchester, Essex, and attended Colchester County High School for Girls. She said she enjoyed playing other people early on.
“I’d pretend to be American and have millionaire parents or pretend to be French and be very exotic or pretend to be deaf,” she told the Times. “I couldn’t see the point of spending every day just being me.”
In a 2016 interview, she said that she had “always been odd” and that she ran away from home for a day to get herself an agent when she was 13.
She played daughter Jenny Porter on the first two seasons (1991-92) of the family comedy 2point4 Children — Clare Buckfield took on the role for the show’s final six seasons — then starred in the romantic comedy feature Au Pair (1994).
An Awfully Big Adventure premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes, and reviewer Janet Maslin in the Times wrote that the film “belongs to Miss Cates. She shows an edge of savvy calculation that’s an integral part of the sweet young thing she plays.”
Cates then moved to Los Angeles, and she first met Ulrich at an Oscar party. They dated for about a year before getting married on their farm in Madison County, Virginia.
Georgina Cates with Vince Vaughn in 1998’s Clay Pigeons.
Courtesy Everett Collection
In 1998, Cates played an actress in Illuminata, the romantic comedy that was written and directed by John Turturro and set in a turn-of-the-century New York theater company, and appeared with her husband and Kiefer Sutherland in the Showtime telefilm A Soldier’s Sweetheart, shot in New Zealand.
Her résumé also included Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s Frankie Starlight (1995), Big City Blues (1997), Stiff Upper Lips (1997), Sinner (2007), Jackass: Bad Grandpa (2013) and, for her last onscreen credit, Everlasting (2016). More recently, she worked as a photographer.
“I always want to do something different, I don’t want to play the same role, I’m just not built that way,” she said. “There are some actors that do that really well every week on TV shows … I’d just get bored.”
