Trinidad-born British actress Jacqui Chan is caught turning the heads of uniformed passers-by in this impromptu snap taken in Venice in 1956 by Anthony Armstrong-Jones (later Lord Snowdon), the British socialite photographer who eventually married Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II’s sister. Chan was also a photographic model and, at the time, was Armstrong-Jones’s girlfriend.
Chan had met him in March of 1955, when the 25-year-old photographer took the 18-year-old dancer’s portrait, when she was starring in the play Teahouse of the August Moon. Armstrong-Jones, however, went on to marry Princess Margaret in 1960 during the time of his relationship with Chan. When Chan heard the news of her former lover’s engagement to Princess Margaret, she reportedly said, “Well, I hope she can cope better than I could.”
In an interview with The Australian Women’s Weekly in February 1961, Chan wanted to make it clear that she had her own success apart from her relationship with Armstrong-Jones. “I do not owe my career to all that sort of publicity,” she said. “The suggestion that I had never been offered a job until all this business is what makes me so mad. It just isn’t true.”
Indeed, Chan, who was born in 1939, has had a long and varied career, both as a dancer on stage, and an actress on the silver screen. She rose to fame thanks to her turn as Gwennie Lee in a 1959 West End stage production of ‘The World of Suzie Wong.
During the 1960s, she had roles in several television series including Dixon of Dock Green, The Hidden Truth, Armchair Theatre and Ghost Squad. She played handmaiden Lotus in the 1963 film Cleopatra that starred Elizabeth Taylor. Chan also lent her vocal skills to Simon Dupree on his 1967 hit record Kites.
Some of her notable works include the role of Mrs Liu in Moving Parts (2017), a film by American director Emilie Upczak; Sherlock in 2012; Mutant Chronicles (2008); Wake of Death (2004); and Netflix drama Marco Polo.
Jacqui Chan, cousin of famed Trinidadian painter Carlisle Chan and sister of Gary and Ian Chan of Woodbrook, continues to fetch TV and film roles, and has been visiting Trinidad over the years.
