1. Heather Christine Sears was a British stage and screen actress.
17 Facts About Heather Sears
1. 2.
Heather Sears had a long association with French culture, which began when she spent summers in Brittany with her pen pal Michelle where she learned to speak French fluently.
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Heather Sears was educated at St Winifred's School, Llanfairfechan until she was 16, when she followed her elder sister Ann Heather Sears to the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
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Heather Sears began performing with the Windsor Repertory Company at the Theatre Royal, Windsor in 1955.
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Heather Sears's film debut was a minor role in Michael Truman's Touch and Go the same year, followed by a part in Maurice Elvey's film version of comedy Dry Rot as the naive Susan.
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At 21, Heather Sears replaced Mary Ure in the part of Alison in John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, playing alongside Alan Bates and Richard Pasco.
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In London, Heather Sears appeared at the Royal Court Theatre with Alan Bates and Richard Pearce in Jean Giraudoux's The Apollo of Bellac under the direction of John Dexter, in Michael Hastings' Yes and at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith in Julien Green's play South.
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Heather Sears had a lifelong friendship with Simone Signoret, who stars as her married rival for Joe Lampton's affections.
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Heather Sears travelled to Australia to appear in the last Ealing Studios film, The Siege of Pinchgut, in which she played a hostage who forms a romantic liaison with an escaped convict.
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In Hammer's production of The Phantom of the Opera, Heather Sears played the opera singer Christine Charles.
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Heather Sears's singing voice was dubbed by opera performer Pat Clark.
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Heather Sears appeared in The Black Torment as Lady Elizabeth, her last feature-film role for many years.
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Heather Sears reduced her work commitments to raise her three sons, but she has appeared on television in many BBC and ITV dramas until 1981.
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Heather Sears appeared as Grusha in Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1969 and in Alan Ayckbourn's comedy How the Other Half Loves in London's West End.
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Heather Sears was based at the Haymarket Theatre in Leicester, where she played title roles in classical plays by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Goldsmith, Dostoyevsky, Ibsen and Strindberg, as well as in the work of more modern playwrights such as Liane Aukin, Brecht, Ayckbourn, Rattigan and Pinter.
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Heather Sears later appeared in a television film adaptation of Dickens' semi-autobiographical novel Great Expectations as Biddy.
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Heather Sears died at the age of 58 in early 1994 of multiple organ failure caused by cancer at the family home in Hinchley Wood near Esher, Surrey.