Susannah York, the gentle star of 1960s cinema, dies after battle against cancer

Actor will be best remembered for Oscar-nominated performance in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Susannah York, the British actress whose gamine looks and demure persona made her an icon of the swinging 60s, has died at the age of 72. She passed away yesterday following a long battle with bone marrow cancer.

York won acclaim for her roles in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? – the 1969 film role for which she was nominated for an Oscar and Golden Globe – as well as A Man For All Seasons in 1966 and as the feisty section officer who took on Kenneth More in the stirring second world war epic Battle of Britain in 1969.

She also had an extensive and critically acclaimed stage career, which included roles in The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs and Henry James's play Appearances, and continued to act late into her life. She was also a children's author, penning two fantasy novels.

Her son, actor Orlando Wells, yesterday described her as "an absolutely fantastic mother, who was very down to earth".

"She loved nothing more than cooking a good Sunday roast and sitting around a fire of a winter's evening. In some senses, she was quite a home girl. Both Sasha [his sister] and I feel incredibly lucky to have her as a mother," he said.

Playwright Sir Tom Stoppard also played tribute to York, recalling his first meeting at the dawn of the 1960s with a woman who was to win a legion of male admirers.

"I remember back in 1961, when I was a young journalist, I interviewed her for a magazine for her film The Greengage Summer, and I still remember how completely charmed I was.

"She was so pleasant to me – she even let me interview her at home as long as I promised not to write that, because journalists weren't normally allowed to go to her home. I still think of her with great affection."

Born Susannah Yolande Fletcher in London in January 1939, her father was a merchant banker and her mother the daughter of a diplomat. Her parents divorced when she was five and after her mother remarried a Scottish businessman the family moved to Scotland.

After training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where she won the Ronson award for most promising student, York began her film career in 1960 when she appeared in Tunes of Glory, co-starring with Alec Guinness and John Mills. In the same year she met and married Michael Wells, with whom she had two children, before they divorced in 1976.

The 1960s proved to be a golden period for her, during which she was to become one of the decade's most memorable faces. A string of successes culminated in her best-known role, starring with Jane Fonda in the Sydney Pollack-directed They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, for which she won a Bafta and an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress.

Critics also praised her performance as Childie, the young lesbian in Robert Aldrich's film adaptation of Frank Marcus's hit play The Killing of Sister George (1968), a role that was said to have demonstrated her versatility.

Acclaim for her work continued into the 1970s, when she went on to appear with Glenda Jackson in The Maids (1975), and in Zee and Co(1972).

Her stage career underwent a particular rejuvenation in the 1990s when she played Gertrude and Mistress Ford in the RSC's productions ofHamlet and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Outside of the world of drama, York was also politically active and supported causes ranging from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to the campaign to free Mordechai Vanunu, who was imprisoned after blowing the whistle on Israel's nuclear arms programme.

York showed the rebellious streak that was a feature of her life when, performing The Loves of Shakespeare's Women in Tel Aviv in 2007, she dedicated the performance to Vanunu.

However, she spoke of the utmost importance of family to her life in a 2008 interview. "Seeing the family is a very important part of my weekend. I see a lot of my daughter Sasha and my son Orlando," she said.

"We all live quite close to each other on different sides of Clapham Common in south London. My grandson, Rafferty, is absolutely lovely. He's a year old and there's another child on the way."

She is survived by her two children, as well as a grandson and a granddaughter.