Susannah York: The actress who broke the rules

With that shock of blonde hair and those powerfully expressive blue eyes, Susannah York stepped from her acting training at Rada in to a movie world that was suddenly being set free.

She excelled in a series of films that challenged audiences and portrayed with a new starkness, sex, madness and dark passions

And while it is true she had, as a teenager, been rapidly "removed" from her boarding school after a nocturnal swimming trip was uncovered, it seems now rather innocent, more a midnight feast gone wrong than a wild child straining at 50s conformity.

Nevertheless, her place in film history is rooted in a series of films that broke the rules.

Watch Tom Jones today and it could only have been made in the 60s. The challenge of television and the surrounding social revolution led to a series of films that suddenly jettisoned all the old styles and restraint.

In the Killing of Sister George, there was not just a liberal dose of onscreen sex but also a plot portraying lesbians. Susannah York's roles in 'The Battle of Britain' and 'A Man for All Seasons' seem in comparison to be almost from a previous age.

But when she won a Bafta for her role as Alice in They Shoot Horses Don't They, there was little doubt that she had what was required in any movie era.

Mentally destroyed by the endless hours of a 30s dance marathon, her eyes stare out of the screen as she stands in a shower trying to wash off the taint of death. It is not a film to warm the soul but who could deny its power.

And again the role of which she was proudest was not an easy watch. In Robert Altman's film Images she plays a woman again on the verge of madness, and while she won the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, it was not an experience that won praise from every critic at the time.

But the fact that she is better known in the 70s for being Superman's mum, the calm wife of Marlon Brando does her acting skills or reputation no justice.

Any acting job, though, was work and she had two children to bring up. There was from this point another 30 years of roles on stage and television.

Fringe theatre, Holby City, a number of one-woman shows, it was varied, she enjoyed acting and it paid the bills.

To see her at her best, get a copy of They Shoot Horses, and return to the 60s - inventive, challenging and delighting in breaking the rules