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1-50 of 339
- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Carmen Elizabeth Ejogo was born in Kensington, London, England, to a Nigerian father and a Scottish mother. Her television career began in the United Kingdom in the early 1990s, where she presented the children's series Saturday Disney (1990). Subsequently, she has had an acting career in the United States. She has appeared in Metro (1997) with Eddie Murphy, What's the Worst That Could Happen? (2001) with Martin Lawrence, and Love's Labour's Lost (2000) with Kenneth Branagh, among other films, and also presented "The Carmen Ejogo Video Show" - her own video show on BSB's Power Station channel. She starred as Thomas Jefferson's slave concubine in the television drama Sally Hemings: An American Scandal (2000) as Sally Hemings and also as Sister Anderson in the remake version of the cult classic original film Sparkle (2012).
Ejogo is also a vocalist, having collaborated with several artists in the 1990s. She wrote and sang lead vocals on the song "Candles" by English drum 'n' bass DJ Alex Reece - she appeared in the music video and is listed in the production credits as 'Carmen'. She also sang vocals and duets with British artist Tricky on a song called "Slowly". Aside from "Candles", Ejogo appears on four songs of the Sparkle (2012) original soundtrack album from the movie of the same name, singing lead on "Yes I Do" (as a solo), and co-lead vocals with Jordin Sparks and Tika Sumpter on "Jump", "Hooked on Your Love" and "Something He Can Feel". She is also a member of Mensa International, the largest and oldest high IQ society in the world.- Actress
- Art Department
- Additional Crew
Samantha Bond was born on 27 November 1961 in Kensington, London, England, UK. She is an actress, known for GoldenEye (1995), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and Die Another Day (2002). She has been married to Alexander Hanson since September 1989. They have two children.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Austin Stowell was born and raised in Kensington, Connecticut, by his father, Robert, a retired steelworker, and his mother, Elizabeth, a schoolteacher. He graduated from Berlin High School in 2003. Upon acceptance at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut, he studied with the Department of Dramatic Arts, a division of the School of Fine Arts. He performed in several productions with the Connecticut Repertory Theatre, including Julius Caesar, It Can't Happen Here, and As You Like It. Stowell graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2007.- English actress Francesca Annis, who has enjoyed a career spanning seven decades in movies, television and the theater, was born in London six days after V-E Day, on May 14, 1945. Her father, Lester, was English, but her mother, Mariquita (aka Mara Purcell), was of Brazilian-French heritage. From the time she was a year old to the age of seven, the family lived in Brazil. The young Francesca spoke Portuguese, that country's language, as a child. Educated at a convent school, she dreamed of becoming a nun but trained as a ballet dancer before studying drama at the Corona Theatre School. She began acting in bit parts in the 1950s, working her way up to better roles. In addition to appearing on the big and little screens, she was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Her most famous roles are as Lady Macbeth in Roman Polanski's version of Macbeth (1971), in which she had a notorious nude sleepwalking scene, and as Kyle MacLachlan (Paul Atreides)' mother Lady Jessica in David Lynch's adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune (1984). A highly respected performer, in 1979, she won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress, playing Lily Langtry in the miniseries Lillie (1978). She appeared with James Warwick as husband and wife sleuths Tommy and Tuppence Beresford in the television series Partners in Crime (1983). She also appeared as Jacqueline Kennedy in the television movie Onassis: The Richest Man in the World (1988). - Actress
- Writer
Dakota Blue Richards, was born at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in South Kensington, London but grew up in Brighton with her mother. She is of Prussian heritage on her Grandmother's side, and Irish on her father's. The name Dakota Blue was inspired by her mother's time spent with Native Americans while studying and traveling in USA. At school, she enjoyed drama, dance and the arts, was an active participant in school plays and attended a local amateur dramatics group in her spare time.
She made her professional acting debut age 12, starring alongside Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig as Lyra Belaqua in the film adaptation of Phillip Pullman's The Northern Lights (The Golden Compass). Ten thousand girls turned up for open auditions in Cambridge, Oxford, Exeter and Kendal for the role; Richards was awarded the part after the casting directors Lucy Bevan and Fiona Weir took a shine to her at the Cambridge auditions. Richards, who was a fan of the books from an early age and had seen the stage adaptation at The National Theatre, said of her character 'I feel like I can relate to her. I like to think I'm quite brave. I stand up for myself. And I don't let other people tell me what to do. Well, unless it's my mum.'
She has been nominated for two best actress awards for her portrayal of popular character Franky Fitzgerald in E4's BAFTA-winning drama Skins, and a multitude of awards, including a Saturn award, for her role in The Golden Compass.
Richards took up screenwriting during her time as WPC Shirley Trewlove in ITV's Endeavour and has since completed a short and a feature length film. She described the experience of writing her first piece as 'In many ways more personal than acting. It was quite cathartic.'
Richards was photographed by RANKIN as part of Ocean 2012, a campaign to prevent over fishing, alongside the likes of Sir Ben Kingsley, Terry Gilliam and Lily Loveless. In 2013 she modelled for fashion designer SORAPOL's AW13 campaign 'Immortal'. She has also been photographed by noted fashion photographer Kate Bellm and was the first woman to appear on the cover of 7th Man magazine.
In her personal life, Richards takes a keen interest in politics and global issues. In 2008, she attended a two-week camp in the Lake District organised by the Equality and Human Rights Commission which aimed to bring together teenagers from different backgrounds to discuss discrimination. Since 2010, she has supported Action for Children, a charity in the United Kingdom helping vulnerable young people overcome injustice and deprivation. In 2011, she fronted an advertising campaign to promote the charity's new project. She is a long time supporter of Good Gifts. Richards is also a vegan.- Actor
- Director
- Soundtrack
Paul McGann was born on 14 November 1959 in Kensington, Liverpool, England, UK. He is an actor and director, known for The Three Musketeers (1993), Withnail & I (1987) and Alien³ (1992). He has been married to Annie Milner since 1992. They have two children.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Joss Ackland, the distinguished English actor who has appeared in over 100 movies, scores of plays and a plethora of television programs in his six-decade career, was born Sidney Edmond Jocelyn Ackland on February 29, 1928, in North Kensington, London. After attending London's Central School of Speech and Drama, the 17-year-old Ackland made his professional stage debut in "The Hasty Heart" in 1945.
Although he first appeared on film in John Boulting's and Roy Boulting's Oscar-winning thriller Seven Days to Noon (1950) in an uncredited bit role, he made his credited debut in a supporting role in Vernon Sewell's Ghost Ship (1952). He would not again grace the big screen until the end of the decade. Instead, Ackland spent the latter half of the 1940s and the first half of the 1950s honing his craft in regional theatrical companies.
In 1955 he left the English stage behind and moved to Africa to manage a tea plantation, an experience that likely informed his heralded performance 20 years later in White Mischief (1987). In his two years in Africa he wrote plays and did service as a radio disc jockey. Upon his return to England in 1957, he joined the Old Vic company.
From 1962-64 he served as associate director of the Mermaid Theatre. Subsequently, his stage acting career primarily was in London's commercial West End theater, where he made a name for himself in musicals. He was distinguished as Captain Hook in the musical version of "Peter Pan" and as Juan Peron in "Evita". In the straight theater he was a memorable Falstaff in William Shakespeare's "Henry IV Parts 1 & 2" and as Captain Shotover in George Bernard Shaw's "Heartbreak House". In the 1960s Ackland began appearing more regularly in films, and his career as a movie character actor picked up rapidly in the 1970s and began to flourish in the 1980s. It has shown little sign of abating in the 21st century, even though he's well into his 70s.
In addition to his performance in "White Mischief", among his more notable turns as an actor before the camera came in the BBC-TV production of Shadowlands (1986), in which he played 'C.S. Lewis', and in Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) as the ruthless South African heavy, Arjen Rudd.
He is the father of seven children, whom he listed as his "hobby" in a 1981 interview. On December 31, 2000, Joss Ackland was named a Commander of the British Empire on the New Year's Honours List for his 50 years of service to the English stage, cinema and television.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Despite being one of the finest actors of his generation, Peter Finch will be remembered as much for his reputation as a hard-drinking, hell-raising womanizer as for his performances on the screen. He was born in London in 1916 and went to live in Sydney, Australia, at the age of ten. There, he worked in a series of dead-end jobs before taking up acting, his film debut being in the mediocre comedy The Farmer Goes to Town (1938). He made his stage debut as a comedian's stooge in 1939. Laurence Olivier spotted him and persuaded him to return to Britain to perform classic roles on the stage. Finch then had an affair with Olivier's wife, Vivien Leigh. Despite being married three times, Finch also had highly-publicized affairs with actresses Kay Kendall and Mai Zetterling. Finch soon switched to film after suffering appalling stage fright. As a screen actor, he won five BAFTA awards and his talent was beyond doubt. His two finest roles, the only two for which he received Oscar nominations, were as the homosexual Jewish doctor in Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) and as the "mad prophet of the air-waves" in Network (1976). He died a couple of months before being awarded the Oscar for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in Network (1976) and was the first actor to have won the award posthumously.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Denholm entered RADA at the age of 17, but dropped out after a year having hated every minute being there. He joined the RAF in 1940, trained as a gunner/radio operator, and was shot down over Germany in 1942. In the POW camp he and his fellow prisoners staged various productions in a theatre constructed out of old packing cases. After the war he joined a London repertory company and his career took off particularly when Laurence Olivier chose him for the starring role in Venus Observed, for which he won a Clarence Derwent award. When another Olivier production Ring Around the Moon transferred to New York Denholm replaced Paul Schofield in what became a Broadway hit. Returning to Britain he was signed to a film contract and appeared in such movies as The Cruel Sea, The Sound Barrier, Alfie, King Rat, and others in addition to appearing on television and making countrywide theatre tours. In 1983 he won a BAFTA Award for his role as the butler in Trading Places and followed it with a Best Supporting Actor Award for his role in A Private Function. Prior to that he won an Evening Standard Best Actor award for Bad Timing.- Charlotte Lewis was born on 7 August 1967 in Kensington, London, England, UK. She is an actress, known for The Golden Child (1986), Men of War (1994) and Broken Badges (1990).
- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Born in London, England, John Gielgud trained at Lady Benson's Acting School and RADA, London. Best known for his Shakespearean roles in the theater, he first played Hamlet at the age of 26. He worked under the tutelage of Lilian Bayliss with friend and fellow performer Laurence Olivier and other contemporaries of the National Theatre at the "Old Vic", London. He made his screen debut in 1924. Academy Award Best Supporting Actor, 1981, for Arthur (1981), Academy Award Nomination, 1964, for Becket (1964).- Marjorie Stewart was born on 18 May 1912 in Kensington, London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Little Big Shot (1952), Lilli Palmer Theatre (1955) and Young and Willing (1954). She was married to Gus March-Phillips. She died on 9 November 1988 in Kensington, London, England, UK.
- Actress
- Director
- Producer
Finola Hughes was born in London. She studied at Arts Educational Schools and began her career in the Northern Ballet Company, after winning the Markova award. She went on to work in the West End, in the original cast of "Cats" and continued working with Andrew Lloyd Webber in "Song & Dance". After making Staying Alive (1983) in LA, she moved to California in 1984 and began working on General Hospital (1963), winning an Emmy award in 1991. She continued to make TV series and various movies for the next few years, Jack's Place (1992), Aspen Extreme (1993), Blossom (1990), Charmed (1998), and returned to ABC daytime, in 1999, to join the cast of All My Children (1970) in New York. Once in NY, she began entering the Fashion World and returned to Los Angeles to begin a 4-year stint on the Style Network, with a fabulous makeover show, How Do I Look? (2004). She returned for a brief sojourn to General Hospital (1963), and it's spin-off, "Night Shift". Finola lives in Santa Barbara with her husband, artist Russell Young, and their 3 children.- Anna Calder-Marshall was born on 11 January 1947 in Kensington, London, England, UK. She is an actress, known for Wuthering Heights (1970), Male of the Species (1969) and Last Christmas (2019). She has been married to David Burke since 20 March 1971. They have one child.
- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Christopher Villiers was born in Kensington, London, England, UK. He is an actor and director, known for Top Secret! (1984), First Knight (1995) and Snijeg za Vodu: Snow for Water (2018).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Susan Hampshire, the English actress who has won three Emmy Awards, was born in Kensington, London on May 12, 1937. Her original ambition was to be a nurse, but she could not pass her O-Level exam in Latin. (She found out when she was 30 years old that she was dyslexic, and her work on dyslexia subsequently brought her the Officer of the British Empire award.) She decided to become an actress and gained training in the theater. She made her movie debut, at 10 years old, in The Woman in the Hall (1947) but her proper debut was in the Laurence Harvey picture, Expresso Bongo (1959), in 1958. Her career has never faltered.
Hampshire made a name for herself in her native Britain, appearing in Katy (1962) on TV in 1962 for the BBC. Walt Disney signed her to star in the 1964 family picture, The Three Lives of Thomasina (1963), but it was her role in the 1967 BBC mini-series, The Forsyte Saga (1967), that made her famous and won her the first of her three Emmy Awards. Shown in the United States on the precursor to PBS, the great popularity of the series led the new PBS to create Masterpiece (1971). The First Churchills (1969), in which Hampshire played "Sarah Churchill", was the first series offered on "Masterpiece Theater" and brought her her second Emmy. In 1973, she won her third, playing "Becky Sharp" in Vanity Fair (1967), for a mini-series that had been released in the UK in 1967.
Susan Hampshire has continued to be active on television and in the theater. She has been married to her second husband, the theatrical impresario, Sir Eddie Kulukundis, since 1981.- Honor Swinton Byrne was born on 6 October 1997 in Kensington & Chelsea, London, England, UK. She is an actress, known for The Souvenir (2019), The Souvenir: Part II (2021) and I Am Love (2009).
- Stewart Granger was born James Lablache Stewart in London, the great grandson of the opera singer Luigi Lablache. He attended Epsom College but left after deciding not to pursue a medical degree. He decided to try acting and attended Webber-Douglas School of Dramatic Art, London. By 1935, he made his stage debut in "The Cardinal" at the Little Theatre Hull . He was with the Birmingham Repertory Company between 1936 and 1937 and, in 1938, he made his debut in the West End, London in "The Sun Never Sets". He joined the Old Vic company in 1939, appearing in 'Tony Draws a Horse' at the Criterion and 'A House in the Square' at the St Martins He had been gradually rising through the ranks of better stage roles when World War II began, and he joined the British Army in 1940. However, he developed an ulcer (1942) which brought his release from military service.
With a dearth of leading men for British movies he quickly landed his first film opportunity The Man in Grey (1943) for Gainsborough Pictures. This was the first installment of the company's successful series of romance films. Not to be confused with American actor James Stewart, James Lablanche Stewart became Stewart Granger (though he was "Jimmy" to his off-screen friends). But the film work was unsatisfying. He was forever cast as the dashing hero type, while fellow up-and-coming actor James Mason always garnered the more substantial Gainsborough part. When Mason got the nod from Hollywood, Granger inherited better parts and, in some star company in one case, the sophisticated Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) with Claude Rains and Vivien Leigh and a very young bit player already being noticed, Jean Simmons. Granger's lead roles to the end of the decade were substantial, but Simmons was unwittingly moving on into British film history with small but memorable roles for David Lean, Michael Powell, and, in a big way, Laurence Olivier, as "Ophelia" in his historic Hamlet (1948) for which she received an Oscar nomination. Granger and she were brought together as co-stars in the comedy Adam and Evalyn (1949). This time around, the chemistry off-camera was there as well, and they became engaged. About the same time, Granger's hope of interesting Hollywood was realized for him and his bride-to-be. He married Simmons and signed with MGM in 1950. Once in Hollywood, he was getting star billing leads in romantic roles that the audiences loved, but he found them still unsatisfying. He also found himself heir apparent to Errol Flynn as a swashbuckler in two popular films: the remake of The Prisoner of Zenda (1952) and Scaramouche (1952). He and Simmons were paired in Young Bess (1953), where Granger had the romantic lead, but Simmons was the focus of the movie.
Through the 50s, the films of each might have fairly equal production values, but as the fortunes of Hollywood go, Simmons was the more memorable star in films that were more popular-some very big hits, the later Elmer Gantry (1960) and Spartacus (1960). That sort of undeclared competition for a married Hollywood couple was poison to the marriage. In 1960, they divorced. Granger did a lot of work in Germany, along with some in Italy and Spain in the 60s. Interestingly, in the same period Simmons was finding the same lack of challenging roles in the US. In the 70s and 80s, Granger was relegated to small screen subsistence with regular TV roles along with a few movies and a stint on the New York stage. And ironically, Simmons was in the same boat during that period. Granger's typecasting was nothing new, but certainly his often scathing criticism of Hollywood and its denizens that came out in his autobiography "Sparks Fly Upward" was understandable and rang true with so many other stories dealing with illusive stardom. Though he was candid in his disgust with his whole career - and admittedly he did not have the depth for the range of roles allotted to bigger named actors - nonetheless he always turned in solid performances in the roles that became his legacy. - Le Touzel was born in London to a prominent family from Jersey, Channel Islands. She showed an interest in acting at an early age, enrolling at a Stage School. Subsequent television roles followed, including as Fanny Price in a 1983 adaptation of Mansfield Park (1983), though, in cult television terms, this was eclipsed by a commercial, still long remembered, for Heineken lager where, in a parody of My Fair Lady (1964) she portrayed an upper-class girl being tutored for a cockney role by Bryan Pringle, success only coming when she drank a can of Heineken (which "refreshes the parts other lagers cannot not reach" and enabled her to proclaim that 'the wa'er in Majjawca don't taste like wot i' ough'a'). Married to actor Owen Teale since 2001, they live, with their two children, in Telegraph Hill, London. In 2008 she appeared on the West End stage with Kenneth Branagh in his generally well received revival of the play 'Ivanov'.
- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Patricia Alma Hitchcock was the only child of Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma Reville. Her upbringing was 'English' and strict. Two years of boarding school from the age of eight was followed by relocation to the U.S. a year later when Hitch was contracted by David O. Selznick to direct Rebecca (1940). Keen to join the acting fraternity, Pat appeared on stage by the early 40s. In 1944, she played the titular role in the short-lived Broadway play Violet at the Belasco Theater. Though she would have liked to go on to a college education, her father instead packed her off to London when she was 18 to study at RADA (among her classmates were Lionel Jeffries and Dorothy Tutin). She made several appearances on the London stage, followed by an inauspicious screen debut in 1949. In 1950, she had a small role in her father's thriller Stage Fright (1950) (as 'Chubby Bannister') which set the tone for her future roles, usually as the dowdy friend or sister of the heroine (Strangers on a Train (1951), Psycho (1960)). She was also featured in ten episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), whenever (in her own words) "they needed a maid with an English accent". In a 1984 Washington Post interview she bemoaned the fact that her father had not believed in nepotism, so that more work would have come her way. In 1951, Pat got married and -- barely a decade later -- decided to forsake show business to raise a family. Her father did not object. In 2003, Pat published a book of reminiscences and anecdotes (co-authored by film writer Laurent Bouzereau), entitled Alma Hitchcock: the Woman Behind the Man, asserting that "My mother had much more to do with the films than she has ever been given credit for - he depended on her for everything, absolutely everything".- A beautiful and durable actress of screen, stage and television, Asherson was born Renée Ascherson in London (dropping the "c" early in her acting career), the younger daughter of Charles Ascherson, a businessman and bibliophile of German-Jewish extraction, and his second wife, Dorothy Wiseman, who wed on 14 December 1910. (Her older sister was Janet Elizabeth Ascherson, born 22 May 1914).
Asherson's parents narrowly avoided being passengers on the fateful maiden voyage of the Titanic in 1912, after Charles Ascherson reportedly canceled the passage due to suffering from appendicitis.
She played the bride of Laurence Olivier's title character in Henry V (1944) (Henry V (1944)). She later appeared in Maniacs on Wheels (1949), a speedway drama with Dirk Bogarde. A frequent co-star of the actor Robert Donat, whom she married in 1953. The couple separated in 1956, but were due to reconcile at the time of his untimely death in London on 9th June 1958, aged 53. - Actress
- Writer
Daisy Beaumont was born on 5 May 1974 in Kensington, London, England, UK. She is an actress and writer, known for The World Is Not Enough (1999), A Touch of Cloth (2012) and Shanghai Knights (2003).- Samuel Joslin was born in 2002 in Kensington, London, England, UK. He is an actor, known for The Impossible (2012), Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2 (2017).
- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Cruttwell attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art from 1978-1981. Before branching out as a writer, director and producer, Cruttwell performed in many theatre productions throughout Great Britain. In 1990, he wrote and starred in the play Waiting for Sir Larry, which won a Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival. He made his film debut in Mike Leigh's Naked (1993) and had a leading role in John Herzfeld's 2 Days in the Valley (1996), starring alongside Danny Aiello, James Spader and Jeff Daniels. His last acting role to date was in the box-office success George of the Jungle (1997). Cruttwell has been seen in numerous British television productions including Murder Most Horrid and Birds of a Feather. In the United States, he guest starred in episodes of Murder She Wrote and The Marshal. In 2000 he wrote and directed the feature film, Chunky Monkey, starring David Threlfall and Alison Steadman, which had a limited release in the UK. In 2002 he co-founded the production company Head Gear Films with Phil Hunt and Compton Ross and in 2007 co-founded international sales and film finance company Bankside Films. In 2001, Cruttwell founded Balham Blazers Football Club. In 2011, the club was voted South East England Charter Standard Community Club of the Year, becoming a full-time senior outfit in Balham F.C. in the process and in 2012 Cruttwell won the London FA Award for Outstanding Contribution To Football In The Community. Since its formation, the club has won over 600 league and cup trophies. It is also a three-time winner of the London F.A. Charter Standard Community Club of the Year Award and a four-time winner of the Wandsworth Sports Club of the Year Award. In addition to founding the club and coaching many age group teams, Cruttwell, now Club President, has been Chairman, Director of Football and First Team Manager. In 2018, having won five promotions in six years to reach Step 5 on the Football League ladder, the club, nicknamed The Blazers, made its first appearance in the FA Cup and won the London Senior Cup, having won the London Senior Trophy in 2017. In 2018 Cruttwell co-devised a football-based TV Quiz show, Football Genius, a Hat Trick production, which was shown on ITV, with Tim Vine as host and Sam Quek and Paul Sinha as team captains. In 2019 he founded a production company, Park the Bus, with a remit to make sports-related drama and documentaries. To date, he has written, directed and produced two films for the company, The Football Monologues and Animals. He's also produced and directed two documentaries, King Of Clubs and In The Middle, which won the Best Screenplay Award at the 2022 Paladino d'Oro Sports Film Festival. Cruttwell, who lives in Suffolk with his wife, Rachel Hart, has four children, two grandchildren and is a lifelong supporter of Fulham FC.- Lou Gish was a bright and sassy actress of natural poise and comic edge. The daughter of the actors Roland Curram and Sheila Gish, she demonstrated her range in her last two stage roles.
At the tiny Gate Theatre in Notting Hill, west London, in January last year, she played General Pinochet's Spanish lawyer in Thea Sharrock's riveting promenade production of Fermín Cabal's Tejas Verdas (Green Gables), a moving memorial to Chilean torture victims. Last summer she took on the role of Goneril in Steven Pimlott's lucid version of King Lear, starring David Warner, in the Minerva Theatre, Chichester.
In the first, she was sleek, reasonable, assured. In the second, she tore up the stage, dashing to the floor the Bible proffered by a distraught Albany (Raad Rawi) and channelling her evil complots through a serpentine presence beautifully contrasted with Zoe Waites's choleric Regan. Her younger sister, Kay Curram, played Cordelia.
Lou and Kay were returning to Chichester in part to memorialise their mother's last stage performance there - as Arkadina in The Seagull in 2003 (a production in which Kay played Nina) - but also to get over it. Typically, they arranged company visits to the local bowling alley and teased their leading man by calling him "Dave" - "He's so not a Dave," they said. Warner himself described Lou as "a wonderful, positive presence, a superb actress whose spirit remained with us for the entire run". She had been forced to leave the production when her illness took hold again.
Lou Gish was born and raised in London. After Macaulay church school, Alleyn's in Dulwich, and Furzedown school, Wandsworth, she took a degree at Camberwell School of Art. She first thought of going into journalism; as a student she won a prize for an article she wrote for Harper's magazine, and the then editor, Beatrix Miller, said she would take her on after graduation.
But Lou decided to change direction and took an office job with the actors' agent Jeremy Conway, where she answered the telephone and served the tea, sometimes jokingly dressed in a waitress uniform. A role in a fringe production in Paddington led to the acquisition of an agent of her own, and a notable cameo in Sean Mathias's 1994 revival of Noel Coward's Design for Living at the Donmar Warehouse. Rachel Weisz was a sensational, sulky Gilda in this production, and Gish, no way fazed, played Helen Carver as a screeching socialite in a glittering sheath.
When her parents first separated (Sheila Gish later married the actor and director Denis Lawson), Roland Curram sombrely announced to his daughters that he was coming out as gay. No big surprise there, said Lou, "as he had brought us up on a diet of Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Barbra Streisand." Gish and Curram had met while working on the film Darling in the mid-1960s. The star and the director, Julie Christie and the late John Schlesinger, were Lou's godparents - the coolest, she said, in the world.
In a second collaboration with Mathias, Lou played a mannish playwright and adoring assistant to Sian Phillips's Marlene Dietrich in Pam Gems's Marlene. She specialised in such strong, but marginalised, romantic figures: at the Watford Palace in 1998, in Phyllis Nagy's skilful adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley, she played Marge as a hilarious piggy-in-the-middle. Later that year, she joined her stepfather Denis Lawson's production of Little Malcolm and his Struggle against the Eunuchs, starring Ewan McGregor, at the Hampstead Theatre, and subsequently in the West End. She played Ann, the object of the lads' fear and misogyny - and of a brutal attack - with devastating contempt.
In 1999, Michael Billington described how Lou - slim, green-eyed and dark-haired - lit up the Chichester stage as a rejected fiancée in Maria Aitken's revival of Noel Coward's underrated comedy Easy Virtue. She was the perfect, swish, middle-class Helena in Look Back in Anger at the Bristol Old Vic in 2001, and an effortlessly aristocratic Duchess of Malfi at the Salisbury Playhouse the following year. Of this latter performance, Alastair Macaulay wrote in the Financial Times that "she doesn't invite us into her tragedy; we are riveted by it from a distance."
Over the last 10 years of her life, Gish appeared regularly on television in such series as The Thin Blue Line (1995) EastEnders (1985), Casualty, Doctors (2000), Wire in the Blood, Coupling (2000) and Where the Heart Is.
She died of cancer at the age of 38 and was survived by her partner, the actor Nicholas Rowe, and her father, stepfather and sister.