British actress turned director Tina Packer, 87, has died, her family announced on Jan. 10. Packer began her career as an actress, most famously costarring in the 1966 mini-series David Copperfield (she was Dora to Ian McKellen’s David). She was also seen in films and on TV in Dr. Who, The Avengers, No Hiding Place, Boy Meets Girl, Crime of Passion, and a handful of other vehicles. But she left acting for directing in the 1970s, moving to the US and forming Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts, where she became acclaimed as one of the best and most innovative Shakespearean directors in the country. Packer also taught at Harvard, MIT, and Columbia; she wrote several books on Shakespeare and toured with her show Women of Will (about Shakespeare’s female characters). Packer said she left acting for directing because “I needed to have power in the theater. I needed to be able to put my own sensibilities out there and really start directing the plays the way I thought they should be directed . . . It’s a process of listening and being affected by what other people say.”
