Elizabeth Spriggs

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Elizabeth Spriggs
Born
Elizabeth Jean Williams

(1929-09-18)18 September 1929[1][2][3][4]
Died2 July 2008(2008-07-02) (aged 78)[1][2][3][4]
OccupationActress
Years active1962-2008
Spouse(s)Kenneth Spriggs (divorced)
Marshall Jones (divorced)
Murray Manson (1977–2008; her death)
Children1

Elizabeth Jean Spriggs (18 September 1929 – 2 July 2008) was an English character actress.

Spriggs' roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company included Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, Gertrude in Hamlet and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. In 1978, she won the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress for Arnold Wesker's Love Letters on Blue Paper. She received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress for the 1995 film Sense and Sensibility. Her other films included Richard's Things (1980), Impromptu (1991), Paradise Road (1997) and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001).

Early life and career[edit]

Born in Buxton, Derbyshire, in 1929, Spriggs had an unhappy childhood, later stating that she "grew up entirely without affection".[5] She studied at the Royal College of Music and taught speech and drama in Coventry. Her first marriage at 21 was a disaster and, in what she called "the most painful decision of my life", left her husband and young daughter to pursue her acting dream. "The desire to act was like a weight within me", she later said, "and I knew if I didn't do anything about it, it would destroy me".[6] She wrote to a repertory company in Stockport, Cheshire, asking for a job and was taken on. She worked with many companies, including in Birmingham and Bristol, before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 1962.

Stage career[edit]

Spriggs was a regular performer with the RSC under Peter Hall until 1976, playing many important Shakespearean roles, including Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, an acclaimed Gertrude in Hamlet opposite David Warner, Calpurnia in Julius Caesar, Mistress Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor and a witty Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. She also featured in RSC productions of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance, Shaw's Major Barbara and Dion Boucicault's comedy London Assurance, playing Lady Gay Spanker alongside Donald Sinden.

In 1976, she moved with Hall from the RSC to the National Theatre when the company's own theatre opened. In the first season she played the eccentric medium Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit. Among her many other plays for the National were Volpone with Paul Scofield, The Country Wife and Macbeth with Albert Finney. In 1978, Spriggs won the Society of West End Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actress for Arnold Wesker's Love Letters on Blue Paper,[7] playing the wife of a dying trade union leader who recalls their early life together (a part she first played on BBC television in 1976).

Her later stage work included a West End revival of J. B. Priestley's When We Are Married in 1986, and Arsenic and Old Lace at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1991.

Television and film[edit]

Spriggs did not work regularly on television until the mid-1970s. She was in Frederic Raphael's The Glittering Prizes (1976), starred as Eleanor Pressett in the BBC drama We, the Accused (1980), played Connie, the head of a battling South London family in the thirteen-part drama Fox (1980), was Martha in Tales Of The Unexpected (1980) and was the formidable Nan in the ITV comedy series Shine on Harvey Moon (1982–85). She appeared in three plays by Alan Bennett: Afternoon Off (1979), Intensive Care (1982) and Our Winnie (1982). She played Calpurnia and Mistress Quickly for the BBC's Shakespeare series, appeared in Doctor Who in the 1987 Sylvester McCoy serial Paradise Towers and was the title witch in a children's series called Simon and the Witch (1987).

In 1990, she gave a memorable performance as one of the God-fearing gossips in the BBC adaptation of Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and in 1992, was in television versions of Kingsley Amis's The Old Devils and Angus Wilson's Anglo-Saxon Attitudes. In 1994, she played the midwife Mrs Gamp in the BBC's adaptation of Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit and was Mrs Cadwallader in Middlemarch by George Eliot. She continued to work on television, in series like Heartbeat, Midsomer Murders (playing a murder victim in the pilot episode of the series in 1997 and returning in 2006 as the character's identical twin sister) and Poirot.

She was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1998, when she was surprised by Michael Aspel at Shepperton Studios.[citation needed]

Her early film appearances included Work Is a Four-Letter Word (1968) and Three into Two Won't Go (1969), both directed by Peter Hall. Her later character roles included Mrs Jennings in Emma Thompson's Oscar-winning adaptation of Sense and Sensibility (1995), a role for which she was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (losing out to co-star Kate Winslet) and the Fat Lady in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001). Her final film was Is Anybody There? (2008) with Michael Caine, released shortly after her death.

Personal life and death[edit]

Spriggs's first two marriages, to Kenneth Spriggs and a fellow RSC actor, Marshall Jones, were dissolved. In 1977, she married her third husband, Murray Manson, a mini-cab driver and musician whom she had met while performing in London Assurance. She had a daughter from her first marriage.[8]

Spriggs died on 2 July 2008, at the age of 78. Her funeral service and interment took place at Saint Mary the Virgin's Churchyard in Thame, Oxfordshire and was attended by family and friends, including Sinéad Cusack, James Ellis and Lesley Sharp, Jeremy Irons, Robert Hardy and Peter Vaughan, who all paid tribute to their friend and fellow actor.[9]

Selected filmography and television[edit]

Year Title Role Notes
1968 Work Is a Four-Letter Word Mrs Murray
1969 Three into Two Won't Go Marcia
1974 Leeds - United! Maggie BBC Play for Today
1980 Richard's Things Mrs Sells
1980 Tales of the Unexpected Martha Sturgis "The Orderly World of Mr Appleby"
1981 Lady Chatterley's Lover Lady Eva
1982 An Unsuitable Job for a Woman Miss Markland
1982 Spider's Web Mildred Peake TV film
1983 Those Glory Glory Days School Mistress TV movie
1984 The Cold Room Frau Hoffman TV movie
1984 Strangers and Brothers Lady Muriel Royce 3 episodes
1985 Parker Mrs Epps
1985 Yellow Pages Mrs Van Der Reuter
1987-1988 Simon and the Witch The Witch 25 episodes
1987 Doctor Who - Paradise Towers Tabby 3 episodes
1991 Impromptu Baroness Laginsky
1992 Heartbeat Rene Kirby "Rumours"
1993 The Hour of the Pig Madame Langlois
1995 Sense and Sensibility Mrs Jennings
1996 Tales from the Crypt Mrs Trask "A Slight Case of Murder"
1996 The Secret Agent Winnie's Mother
1996 The Snow Queen's Revenge Brenda Voice
1997 Paradise Road Mrs Roberts
1997 For My Baby Olga Jenikova
1997 Midsomer Murders Iris Rainbird "The Killings at Badger's Drift"
1998 Casualty Barbara Thomas "Eye Spy"
1998 The Barber of Siberia Perepelkina
1999 Alice in Wonderland The Duchess TV movie
1999 A Christmas Carol Mrs Riggs TV movie
1999 Wives and Daughters Mrs Goodenough 3 episodes
2000 Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) Mrs Glauneck "A Man of Substance"
2001 Nice Guy Eddie Vera McMullen TV movie
2001 Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone The Portrait Of The Fat Lady
1998-2002 Playing the Field Mrs Mullen 26 episodes
2002 Nice Guy Eddie Vera McMullen 7 episodes
2002 Shackleton Janet Stancombe Wills 2 episodes
2003 Wren: The Man Who Built Britain Queen Anne TV movie documentary
2003–2004 Swiss Toni Swiss Toni's Mother 12 episodes
2003, 2004 The Royal Dolly Smith "If Not For You", "For Better, for Worse"
2004 The Queen of Sheba's Pearls Laura Pretty
2005 Where the Heart Is Maureen "Care"
2005 Heartbeat Mrs Andrews "The End of the Road"
2005 Jericho Ellen Jericho 'The Hollow Men"
2006 Midsomer Murders Ursula Gooding "Dead Letters"
2006 Agatha Christie's Poirot Mrs Leadbetter "Taken at the Flood"
2008 Love Soup Penny's Mother 'Integrated Logistics"
2008 Is Anybody There? Prudence (final film role)

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Barker, Dennis; "Obituary: Elizabeth Spriggs" Guardian.co.uk, 7 July 2008 (Retrieved: 31 July 2009)
  2. ^ a b "Obituary: Elizabeth Spriggs" Telegraph.co.uk, 3 July 2008 (Retrieved: 31 July 2009)
  3. ^ a b "Elizabeth Spriggs: versatile character actress" TimesOnline.co.uk, 4 July 2008 (Retrieved: 31 July 2009)
  4. ^ a b Newley, Patrick; "Elizabeth Spriggs" TheStage.co.uk, 11 July 2008 (Retrieved: 31 July 2009)
  5. ^ "Spriggs [née Williams], Elizabeth Jean (1929–2008)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/100156. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  6. ^ Elizabeth Spriggs: Versatile character actress, The Independent, 5 July 2008 [1]
  7. ^ Smith, Alistair; "RSC stalwart Spriggs dies" Archived 1 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine TheStage.co.uk, 7 July 2008 (Retrieved: 31 July 2009)
  8. ^ "Elizabeth Spriggs". The Telegraph. 3 July 2008. Retrieved 28 November 2023.
  9. ^ "Thame's local news - ThameNews.Net Oxfordshire, UK". Archived from the original on 12 September 2012.

External links[edit]