Blanche Marvin

Blanche Marvin MBE, (born 1925, formerly Blanche Zohar), is a UK-based, American theatre critic, producer, playwright and former actor.
Marvin was born in New York City, New York, in January 1925.
She created the Empty Space Peter Brook award in 1991 and funds it personally.
A friend of Tennessee Williams, she says the playwright used her name for the character Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, named the character's sister Stella after Marvin's former name "Zohar" (which means "Star"), and took the play's line "I've always depended on the kindness of strangers" from something she said to him.
She was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2010, for services to theatre, and appeared as a "castaway" on the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs on 16 November 2012.
A widow, she lives in St John's Wood, north London.