Alison Leggatt

Alison Leggatt was an English character actress who built her early career in the theater. Born in Kensington, London, she trained with Elsie Fogerty at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, then based at the Royal Albert Hall. In 1927, Miles Malleson's The Fanatics helped launch her career, and she later appeared in the original 1931 Drury Lane production of Noel Coward's Cavalcade. Her first major film role was Aunt Sylvia in This Happy Breed (1944). She often played stern relatives, kindly landladies, curious neighbors, and domestic helpers. In John Schlesinger's Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) she was Mrs Hurst, and her last screen appearance came in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976). Her stage work included appearances at Stratford and original West End productions of plays by Bernard Shaw, T.S. Eliot, John Osborne, and Harold Pinter. She played the Queen of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1966) and the Duchess of Kent in Edward the Seventh (1975).