SUSAN HAMPSHIRE
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Cast in the role of Jean Simmons as a child in The Woman in the Hall (d. Jack Lee, 1947), Susan Hampshire was smitten with the acting bug. She finished her education and went into the theatre, making her debut in Expresso Bongo (1958), repeating her role as a twittering deb in the 1959 film version (d. Val Guest).
She had the female leads in the Cliff Richard musical, Wonderful Life (d. Sidney J.Furie, 1964), and Karel Reisz's updating of Night Must Fall (1964), and was taken up by the Disney Organisation for The Three Lives of Thomasina (d. Don Chaffey, 1963), which cast her as a witch, and The Fighting Prince of Donegal (d. Michael O'Herlihy, 1966).
She won Emmy awards for the determined Fleur Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga (BBC, 1967), which set a kind of benchmark for the genre, for ambitious Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair (BBC, 1967), and for manipulative Sarah in The First Churchills (BBC, 1969), perhaps surpassing them all as Glencora, growing from heedless youth to tender age in The Pallisers (BBC, 1974). Certainly, these gave her chances beyond any in film, and the beauty and charm were revealed intact, along with touches of mature wit, in the Scottish-set miniseries, Monarch of the Glen (BBC, 1999- ).
She wrote a memoir, Susan's Story (1981), chronicling her struggles with dyslexia and received an OBE in 1995 for her work in this cause.
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