Goldie Semple as Desiree Armfeldt, left, and George Masswohl as Fredrik Egerman in A Little Night Music at the Shaw Festival in 2008. (David Cooper/Shaw Festival)Classical actress Goldie Semple, who spent 17 seasons with the Shaw Festival in Ontario and also worked at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, has died at age 56.

Semple died Wednesday after a long battle with cancer.

This past season, she played Dolly, Clara, and Clare Wedderburn in Brief Encounters, an evening of three Noel Coward one-act plays at the festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Last season she appeared as Desirée Armfeldt in A Little Night Music.

She was to have played the role of Madame Ranyevskaya in Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard at the Shaw Festival next season.

An actress known for her warmth and wit, she had roles in numerous productions at the festival, ranging from The Importance of Being Earnest, Easy Virtue and Peter Pan to Heartbreak House and Candida.

Shaw artistic director Jackie Maxwell remembered Semple on Thursday as an "extraordinary actress and woman of the theatre who combined an unequalled grace, beauty and elegance with a deep passion and — so delightful when you got to know her — a surprisingly wicked sense of humour and ultimate pragmatism."

In addition to her work at Shaw, Semple taught and mentored aspiring actors in a summer intensive course for Queen's University students in Niagara-on-the-Lake. She also taught at a number of other Canadian academic institutions and at New York University.

Before joining the Shaw company, she spent nine seasons at Stratford, playing Cleopatra in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and Maggie the Cat in Tennessee Williams's Cat On a Hot Tin Roof.

Semple as Clare Wedderburn, with Thom Marriot as Mr. Wadhurst, in Brief Encounters at the 2009 Shaw Festival. (David Cooper/Shaw Festival)

She acted opposite Colm Feore in the 1998 production of Taming of the Shrew that was Richard Monette's first directing effort of a full-length Stratford production. It was notable for being set in Rome of the 1950s and for highly praised performances by Feore and Semple as Kate.

Born in Richmond, B.C., Semple studied theatre at the University of British Columbia, then at the Bristol Old Vic in England.

Her career took her to stages across the country, including the Vancouver Playhouse, the Manitoba Theatre Centre, Alberta Theatre Projects, and Canadian Stage and Tarragon Theatre in Toronto.

She appeared in TV shows such as Queer as Folk and Street Legal and the 1998 TV movie Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story.

Semple co-founded the Stratford-based theatre company Foolscap and also compiled and performed programs of poetry and music for the Niagara Historical Museum.

Semple was married to fellow classical actor Lorne Kennedy for 32 years. She is survived by Kennedy and their daughter, Madeline.