Brenda Bruce

Brenda Bruce was an English actress who worked across theater, radio, film and television. Born in Prestwich, Lancashire, she started as a teenage stage chorus girl and joined the Birmingham Repertory Company for the late 1930s. She had a long association with the Royal Shakespeare Company, playing Mistress Page in its staging of The Merry Wives of Windsor across 1964, 1968, 1975 and 1995, and Irma in Jean Genet's The Balcony in 1971. She took television drama parts in the 1950s, and in 1962 played Winnie in the British premiere of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. Later roles included Lucilla Edith Cavell Teatime in the 1977 Murder Most English, Aunt Dahlia in the 1990s Jeeves and Wooster production, and Tilda in Paradise Towers, a Doctor Who story. Her films included Peeping Tom and Nightmare (1964). She won a Society of Film and Television Arts Television Award in 1962, a BAFTA Best Actress award in 1963, and an OBE in 1985.