Collin Wilcox was an American film, stage and television actress. Over her career, she was also credited as Collin Wilcox-Horne or Collin Wilcox-Paxton. Wilcox may be best known for her role in To Kill a Mockingbird, in which she played Mayella Violet Ewell, whose false claim of being raped sparks the trial at the center of the film.
Early years
Wilcox was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and moved with her family to Highlands, North Carolina, as a baby. Her interest in theater was sparked by her parents, Jack H. and Virginia Wilcox, who founded the Highlands Community Theater in 1939. She attended the University of Tennessee, where she studied drama.
Career
Wilcox made her professional debut in Chicago as part of the improvisational group, The Compass Players, which included Mike Nichols, Elaine May, and Shelley Berman. Playing opposite Richard Basehart, Kevin McCarthy, and William Hansen, Wilcox won the Clarence Derwent Award for her performance in The Day The Money Stopped by Maxwell Anderson and Brendan Gill, which lasted only three nights on Broadway in 1958. She starred in the 1961 play Look, We've Come Through with Burt Reynolds on Broadway. She replaced another actress in the 1963 revival of Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude and then went on to do the 1965 play The Family Way, both on Broadway. A life member of The Actors Studio, Wilcox is perhaps best known for her role in the 1962 filmTo Kill a Mockingbird, in which she played Mayella Violet Ewell, who falsely accuses Tom Robinson of raping her. Following that cinematic acting success, she performed two very memorable roles for television in 1964: The Twilight Zone episode "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode "The Jar", based on the Ray Bradbury short story. She appeared as Bess Frye in a 1972 episode of Gunsmoke titled "Jubilee". In 1974, she co-starred with Peter Falk and Robert Conrad in the Columbo episode "An Exercise in Fatality" as Ruth Stafford. She remained active performing both on television and in films. Her final role was that of Mrs. Kline in the movie A Touch of Fate, which was released in 2003, six years before her death.
Civil rights activism
She recalled receiving "unfriendly looks" when she showed up at an NAACP conference in Monterey, California, where an official had to remind participants: "Collin is here at this conference because she believes in the cause. She is not the character in the film." This was due to the fact that, in the film To Kill a Mockingbird, she played a white woman who falsely accused Tom Robinson, a black man, of raping her.
Death
On October 14, 2009, Wilcox died from brain cancer, aged 74, at her home in Highlands, North Carolina. She was cremated and her ashes returned to her family.
