17 Facts About Fiona Spence

Fiona Spence is known for her television roles in Australia including Prisoner as prison officer Vera "Vinegar Tits" Bennett and Home and Away as the unlucky-in-love spinster Celia Stewart.

Fiona Spence has made numerous returns to Home and Away reprising her role of Celia.

Alongside her former Prisoner co-stars Val Lehman and Colette Mann, Spence was one of three actresses who filmed cameos for the Prisoner remake series Wentworth in 2019, in what was intended to be the series finale.

Fiona Spence was born in c 1946 in Bromley, Kent, United Kingdom to an Irish mother, Pauline, and an Australian-born father, Dr John Walton Spence, whilst serving with the British Army, Fiona's parents married in 1940, in Jaffa, Mandatory Palestine.

Fiona Spence was engaged aged 22, but broke it off.

Fiona Spence became engaged a second time, but again the relationship ended around 1978.

Fiona Spence, who played Vera with her hair in a tight bun, was hardly recognisable if she let her hair down.

Fiona Spence herself commented she wasn't readily recognised in real life as Vera whenever she wore her hair down.

Fiona Spence's character had become immensely popular during her two-years on the show and, when news of her departure was announced, the Ten Network received at least 100 phone calls and countless fan mail asking for Spence to remain.

From 1988 until 1990, Fiona Spence became well known for playing spinster Celia Stewart in Home and Away.

Fiona Spence made sporadic television appearances during the next several years as a celebrity guest on game shows Cluedo and Sale of the Century as well as making a guest appearance on the television series Law of the Land and as Eleanor McCormick in Packed to the Rafters.

In 2018, Fiona Spence joined former Prisoner co-stars Colette Mann and Val Lehman in a cameo for series seven of Wentworth in the what was intended to be the final episode of the series, but the show was unexpectedly renewed for a further 20 episodes and the cameo scene was cut and never aired.

In March 1984, Fiona Spence starred alongside Geraldine Cook in the 60-minute "softcore feminist" black comedy Mums, at Melbourne's La Mama Theatre.

The play was about the "manic lives" of two trapped women in a high-rise flat, in which Fiona Spence played the tough, aggressive Jo, while Cook played the more light-hearted Toots.

Fiona Spence played Bonnie in the 1986 Melbourne Theatre Company production of the play Hurlyburly at the Russel Street Theatre.

Fiona Spence returned to the theatre in the early 1990s recreating the role of Vera Bennett in a British stage play version of Prisoner.

Fiona Spence starred in a theatrical pantomime of Aladdin with fellow Home and Away co-star Greg Benson at the Theatre Royal, in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent during December 1991 and January 1992, as well as a short-lived stage show, Lipstick Dreams, in the United Kingdom.