Goldie Semple

Marigold “Goldie” Semple received her early theatrical training at the University of British Columbia, where her colleagues included her lifelong friend, Nicola Cavendish, and her husband of 32 years, Lorne Kennedy. Semple and Kennedy went on to study at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and then returned to Canada, where they worked essentially non-stop for the next three decades, staying together as often as possible. She lived in Ontario for the last 25 years of her life spending her last 17 years at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake and the previous nine at the Stratford Festival. She made only a few television appearances. Sticken with breast cancer, Semple kept working during her lengthy illness and made her final performance in a 2009 series of Noel Coward plays called Brief Encounters, where she turned in three masterful comedy performances in one evening, earning smashing reviews and audience acclaim.