Felicity Ann Kendal was born on 25 September 1946 and is an English actress, working principally in television and theatre.
47 Facts About Felicity Kendal
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Felicity Kendal has appeared in numerous stage and screen roles over a more than 70-year career, including as Barbara Good in the television series The Good Life from 1975 to 1977.
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Felicity Kendal's father was an English actor-manager who led his own repertory company on tours of India, and Kendal appeared in roles for the company both before and after leaving England.
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Felicity Kendal appeared in the film Shakespeare Wallah which was inspired by her family.
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Felicity Kendal made several television appearances, starting with Love Story in 1966, and made her London stage debut in Minor Murder at the Savoy Theatre.
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Felicity Kendal was approached to appear in The Good Life while appearing in The Norman Conquests, and appeared in all four series.
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Felicity Kendal later went on to star in the sitcoms Solo and The Mistress which were scripted by Carla Lane.
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However, the poor reception to the 1994 sitcom Honey for Tea led Felicity Kendal to focus on stage rather than television work for some years.
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Felicity Kendal appeared in ten plays directed by Peter Hall, from portraying Constanze Mozart in Amadeus to Esme in Amy's View.
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Felicity Kendal took her first role in a musical as Evangeline Harcourt in the 2021 London revival of Anything Goes at the Barbican Theatre.
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Felicity Kendal was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1995 New Year Honours for services to drama.
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Felicity Ann Kendal was born in Olton, Warwickshire, England, in 1946.
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Felicity Kendal is the younger daughter of Laura Liddell and actor and manager Geoffrey Kendal.
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Felicity Kendal contracted typhoid fever in Calcutta at the age of 17.
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Felicity Kendal made her stage debut for her family's company aged nine months, when she was carried on stage as the changeling boy in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
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Felicity Kendal's first speaking role was as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream when she was 12.
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Felicity Kendal played Lizzie Buckingham, the daughter of the company's actor-managers, who falls in love with the son of film star Manjula, portrayed by Madhur Jaffrey.
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Felicity Kendal felt that it prepared her for a career in theatre as she did not have any established expectations about how things should be.
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Felicity Kendal appeared in two episodes of Love Story in 1966, and as a teenage hippie in "The May Fly and the Frog", an episode of The Wednesday Play which starred John Gielgud, the same year.
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Felicity Kendal had her big break on television with the BBC sitcom The Good Life which started in 1975.
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Felicity Kendal appeared in all 30 episodes, which extended over four series and two specials, until 1977.
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Felicity Kendal later recounted that she was keen to get the part, both because she needed work and because she felt a rapport with Briers, who was already established, having appeared regularly in television shows since 1962.
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Felicity Kendal has maintained that the character of Barbara Good is very dissimilar to her as a person.
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Davies was so impressed by the performances from Felicity Kendal, Keith and Eddington that when he was Head of Comedy for the BBC, he gave them all starring roles in new series: Yes Minister for Eddington, To The Manor Born for Keith, and Solo for Felicity Kendal.
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Carla Lane wrote Solo, in which Felicity Kendal played the lead role of Gemma Palmer, who decides to split from her boyfriend and live independently.
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Lane wrote The Mistress in which Felicity Kendal portrayed a florist having an affair with a married man, played by Jack Galloway in 1985 and with a different character played by Peter McEnery in the 1987 version.
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However the 1994 sitcom Honey for Tea starring Felicity Kendal was later described by Maureen Paton of the Daily Telegraph as "an unmitigated flop".
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Felicity Kendal's character Rosemary Boxer is a University of Malmesbury lecturer in applied horticulture.
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Felicity Kendal auditioned unsuccessfully for Val May at the Bristol Old Vic in early 1966.
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Felicity Kendal made her London stage debut in Minor Murder at the Savoy Theatre.
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Felicity Kendal was cast as Amaryllis in the 1969 production of Back to Methuselah at the Old Vic.
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Felicity Kendal had departed to look after her new baby by the time the group reconvened in mid-1973.
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Felicity Kendal won the Variety Club's Best Stage Actress Award for her performance as Marain in Michael Frayn's Clouds at the Duke of York's Theatre, London.
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Felicity Kendal later recounted that her experience in the production "taught me to focus on the play rather than the role".
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The Stoppard scholar Paul Delaney wrote in 1990 that Felicity Kendal "first dazzled Stoppard audiences" in On the Razzle, and made Annie in The Real Thing a "poignant role".
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Felicity Kendal won the Evening Standard Theatre Award in 1989 for her performances in Much Ado About Nothing and Ivanov.
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The critic Sheridan Morley felt that Felicity Kendal was "rapidly becoming out most expert player of classic farce" after seeing her in Mind Millie for Me, an adaptation of a Georges Feydeau farce at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London in 1996.
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Felicity Kendal starred as Esme in the West End revival of Amy's View by David Hare, which was her tenth collaboration with director Peter Hall.
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Felicity Kendal appeared in the West End as Florence Lancaster in Noel Coward's play The Vortex in 2008.
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Felicity Kendal toured the UK and Australia as Judith Bliss in Noel Coward's Hay Fever, which then played in the West End in 2015.
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Felicity Kendal took her first role in a musical as Evangeline Harcourt in the 2021 London revival of Anything Goes at the Barbican Theatre.
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In 2023, Felicity Kendal starred as Dotty Otley in Noises Off at the Phoenix Theatre and the Theatre Royal Haymarket.
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The Daily Telegraph reviewer Marianka Swain felt that Felicity Kendal was "more brilliant than ever" in the role.
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In 1995, Felicity Kendal was one of the readers of Edward Lear poems on a spoken-word CD bringing together a collection of Lear's nonsense songs.
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Felicity Kendal reunited with Rudman in 1998, and they remained partners until he died on 30 March 2023.
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In 1981, Felicity Kendal was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1995 New Year Honours for services to drama.
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Felicity Kendal is an ambassador for the charity Royal Voluntary Service, previously known as WRVS.