18 Facts About Gwen Watford

Gwendoline Watford, professionally known after the mid-1950s as Gwen Watford, was an English actress.

Gwen Watford played a wide range of roles, from Shakespeare and Shaw to new works by playwrights including Willis Hall, David Hare, Hugh Leonard and David Mercer.

Gwen Watford twice won the Society of Film and Television Arts's award for best television actress.

Gwendoline Watford was born in London, the third of three children of Percy Charles Watford and his wife Elizabeth, nee Cooper.

Percy Gwen Watford had been a non-commissioned officer in the First World War, and then became the landlord of a public house at St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex.

Gwen Watford had ambitions to become a concert pianist, but after being advised by an expert that a career as a soloist was beyond her talents, she turned to drama, with the encouragement of her headmistress.

Gwen Watford made her first professional appearance at the White Rock Theatre, Hastings in March 1944, as Florrie in the comedy Once A Gentleman.

In 1955 Gwen Watford returned to the West End in a production of Ugo Betti's The Queen and the Rebels, transferred from Coventry to the Haymarket Theatre.

Gwen Watford made her film debut playing Lady Usher in The Fall of the House of Usher, but as her obituarist in The Times put it, "the cinema was never really her medium", and along with her stage performances it was for her roles on television that she became best known.

Gwen Watford was again named as best television actress by the Society of Film and Television Arts in 1966.

Gwen Watford was seen on the London stage in three productions during the decade.

Gwen Watford recreated the role the following year for BBC radio.

The critics found the adaptation poor, and Gwen Watford received mixed notices, rating her from excellent and the best actress in the cast to charming but shallow.

In 1971 Gwen Watford toured in a revival of Maugham's The Constant Wife and the following year she was a founder-member of Robin Phillips's Company Theatre group, based at the Greenwich Theatre; fellow members included Jeremy Brett, Charles Dance, Mia Farrow, Penelope Keith and Joan Plowright.

The Stage, commenting in 1974 that Gwen Watford was too rarely seen in London, asked "why it is that this supremely talented actress so seldom gets the parts she deserves in the theatres to which her abilities entitle her".

Gwen Watford's only cinema role of the decade was a deranged Indian servant in a horror film, The Ghoul.

Gwen Watford was last seen in the West End as Alice More opposite Charlton Heston in A Man for All Seasons, in a production transferred from the Chichester Festival; the Evening Standard found her performance so touching that it "would make a stone weep".

Gwen Watford was in several series, including Crown Court for ITV and Behaving Badly for Channel 4.