Elizabeth Spriggs

Elizabeth Spriggs
Born	Elizabeth Jean Williams (1929-09-18)18 September 1929 Buxton, Derbyshire, England
Died	2 July 2008(2008-07-02) (aged 78) Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1962-2008
Spouse(s)	Kenneth Spriggs (divorced) Marshall Jones (divorced) Murray Manson (1977–2008; her death)
Children	1

Elizabeth Jean Spriggs (18 September 1929 – 2 July 2008) was an English character actress.

Spriggs' roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company included Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, Gertrude in Hamlet and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. In 1978, she won the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress for Arnold Wesker's Love Letters on Blue Paper. She received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress for the 1995 film Sense and Sensibility. Her other films included Richard's Things (1980), Impromptu (1991), Paradise Road (1997) and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001).

Early life and career

Born in Buxton, Derbyshire, in 1929, Spriggs had an unhappy childhood, later stating that she "grew up entirely without affection". She studied at the Royal College of Music and taught speech and drama in Coventry. Her first marriage at 21 was a disaster and, in what she called "the most painful decision of my life", left her husband and young daughter to pursue her acting dream. "The desire to act was like a weight within me", she later said, "and I knew if I didn't do anything about it, it would destroy me". She wrote to a repertory company in Stockport, Cheshire, asking for a job and was taken on. She worked with many companies, including in Birmingham and Bristol, before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 1962.

Stage career

Spriggs was a regular performer with the RSC under Peter Hall until 1976, playing many important Shakespearean roles, including Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, an acclaimed Gertrude in Hamlet opposite David Warner, Calpurnia in Julius Caesar, Mistress Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor and a witty Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. She also featured in RSC productions of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance, Shaw's Major Barbara and Dion Boucicault's comedy London Assurance, playing Lady Gay Spanker alongside Donald Sinden.

In 1976, she moved with Hall from the RSC to the National Theatre when the company's own theatre opened. In the first season she played the eccentric medium Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit. Among her many other plays for the National were Volpone with Paul Scofield, The Country Wife and Macbeth with Albert Finney. In 1978, Spriggs won the Society of West End Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actress for Arnold Wesker's Love Letters on Blue Paper, playing the wife of a dying trade union leader who recalls their early life together (a part she first played on BBC television in 1976).

Her later stage work included a West End revival of J. B. Priestley's When We Are Married in 1986, and Arsenic and Old Lace at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1991.

Television and film

Spriggs did not work regularly on television until the mid-1970s. She was in Frederic Raphael's The Glittering Prizes (1976), starred as Eleanor Pressett in the BBC drama We, the Accused (1980), played Connie, the head of a battling South London family in the thirteen-part drama Fox (1980), was Martha in Tales Of The Unexpected (1980) and was the formidable Nan in the ITV comedy series Shine on Harvey Moon (1982–85). She appeared in three plays by Alan Bennett: Afternoon Off (1979), Intensive Care (1982) and Our Winnie (1982). She played Calpurnia and Mistress Quickly for the BBC's Shakespeare series, appeared in Doctor Who in the 1987 Sylvester McCoy serial Paradise Towers and was the titular witch in the Children's BBC series Simon and the Witch (1987).

In 1990, she gave a memorable performance as one of the God-fearing gossips in the BBC adaptation of Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and in 1992, was in television versions of Kingsley Amis's The Old Devils and Angus Wilson's Anglo-Saxon Attitudes. In 1994, she played the midwife Mrs Gamp in the BBC's adaptation of Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit and was Mrs Cadwallader in Middlemarch by George Eliot. She continued to work on television, in series like Heartbeat, Midsomer Murders (playing a murder victim in the pilot episode of the series in 1997 and returning in 2006 as the character's identical twin sister) and Poirot.

She was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1998, when she was surprised by Michael Aspel at Shepperton Studios.

Her early film appearances included Work Is a Four-Letter Word (1968) and Three into Two Won't Go (1969), both directed by Peter Hall. Her later character roles included Mrs Jennings in Emma Thompson's Oscar-winning adaptation of Sense and Sensibility (1995), a role for which she was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (losing out to co-star Kate Winslet) and the Fat Lady in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001). Her final film was Is Anybody There? (2008) with Michael Caine, released shortly after her death.

Personal life and death

Spriggs's first two marriages, to Kenneth Spriggs and a fellow RSC actor, Marshall Jones, were dissolved. In 1977, she married her third husband, Murray Manson, a mini-cab driver and musician whom she had met while performing in London Assurance. She had a daughter from her first marriage.

Spriggs died on 2 July 2008, at the age of 78. Her funeral service and interment took place at Saint Mary the Virgin's Churchyard in Thame, Oxfordshire and was attended by family and friends, including Sinéad Cusack, James Ellis and Lesley Sharp, Jeremy Irons, Robert Hardy and Peter Vaughan, who all paid tribute to their friend and fellow actor.

Selected filmography and television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1968	Work Is a Four-Letter Word	Mrs Murray
1969	Three into Two Won't Go	Marcia
1974	Leeds - United!	Maggie	BBC Play for Today
1980	Richard's Things	Mrs Sells
1980	Tales of the Unexpected	Martha Sturgis	"The Orderly World of Mr Appleby"
1981	Lady Chatterley's Lover	Lady Eva
1982	An Unsuitable Job for a Woman	Miss Markland
1982	Spider's Web	Mildred Peake	TV film
1983	Those Glory Glory Days	School Mistress	TV movie
1984	The Cold Room	Frau Hoffman	TV movie
1984	Strangers and Brothers	Lady Muriel Royce	3 episodes
1985	Parker	Mrs Epps
1985	Yellow Pages	Mrs Van Der Reuter
1985	Bergerac - Return of the Ice Maiden	Ms Mary-Lou Costain	1 episode
1987-1988	Simon and the Witch	The Witch	25 episodes
1987	Doctor Who - Paradise Towers	Tabby	3 episodes
1991	Impromptu	Baroness Laginsky
1992	Heartbeat	Rene Kirby	"Rumours"
1993	The Hour of the Pig	Madame Langlois
1995	Sense and Sensibility	Mrs Jennings
1996	Tales from the Crypt	Mrs Trask	"A Slight Case of Murder"
1996	The Secret Agent	Winnie's Mother
1996	The Snow Queen's Revenge	Brenda	Voice
1997	Paradise Road	Mrs Roberts
1997	For My Baby	Olga Jenikova
1997	Midsomer Murders	Iris Rainbird	"The Killings at Badger's Drift"
1998	Casualty	Barbara Thomas	"Eye Spy"
1998	The Barber of Siberia	Perepelkina
1999	Alice in Wonderland	The Duchess	TV movie
1999	A Christmas Carol	Mrs Riggs	TV movie
1999	Wives and Daughters	Mrs Goodenough	3 episodes
2000	Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased)	Mrs Glauneck	"A Man of Substance"
2001	Nice Guy Eddie	Vera McMullen	TV movie
2001	Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone	The Portrait Of The Fat Lady
1998-2002	Playing the Field	Mrs Mullen	26 episodes
2002	Nice Guy Eddie	Vera McMullen	7 episodes
2002	Shackleton	Janet Stancombe Wills	2 episodes
2003	Wren: The Man Who Built Britain	Queen Anne	TV movie documentary
2003–2004	Swiss Toni	Swiss Toni's Mother	12 episodes
2003, 2004	The Royal	Dolly Smith	"If Not For You", "For Better, for Worse"
2004	The Queen of Sheba's Pearls	Laura Pretty
2005	Where the Heart Is	Maureen	"Care"
2005	Heartbeat	Mrs Andrews	"The End of the Road"
2005	Jericho	Ellen Jericho	'The Hollow Men"
2006	Midsomer Murders	Ursula Gooding	"Dead Letters"
2006	Agatha Christie's Poirot	Mrs Leadbetter	"Taken at the Flood"
2008	Love Soup	Penny's Mother	'Integrated Logistics"
2008	Is Anybody There?	Prudence	(final film role)

External links

• Elizabeth Spriggs at IMDb

• Elizabeth Spriggs at Find a Grave