Dame Thora Hird was an English actress and comedian, presenter and writer.
12 Facts About Thora Hird
2.
Thora Hird first appeared on stage at the age of two months in a play her father was managing, carried on stage in her mother's arms.
3.
Thora Hird worked at the local Co-operative store before joining the Morecambe Repertory Theatre.
4.
Thora Hird often described her father, who initially did not want her to be an actress, as her sternest critic and attributed much of her talent as an actress and comedian to his guidance.
5.
Thora Hird played a variety of roles, including the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, and won BAFTA Best Actress awards for her roles in two of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads monologues.
6.
Thora Hird was created an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1983 Birthday Honours and raised to Dame Commander in the 1993 Birthday Honours.
7.
In December 1998, using a wheelchair, Thora Hird played a brief but energetic cameo role as the mother of Dolly on Dinnerladies, a sarcastic character who was particularly bitter towards her daughter.
8.
Thora Hird's final acting work was for BBC Radio 7, which was recorded and broadcast in 2002: a monologue written for her by Alan Bennett entitled The Last of the Sun, in which she played a forthright, broad-minded woman, immobile in an old people's home but still able to take a stand against the censorious and politically correct attitudes of her own daughter.
9.
Thora Hird was the subject of This Is Your Life on two occasions: in January 1964 when she was surprised by Eamonn Andrews, and in December 1996, when Michael Aspel surprised her while filming on location for Last of the Summer Wine.
10.
Thora Hird suffered from severe arthritis and used a wheelchair in her later life.
11.
Thora Hird was mother-in-law to jazz singer Mel Torme for eleven years.
12.
Thora Hird was widowed in 1994, having been married for 57 years.