Jean Alexander

Jean Hodgkinson, known by the stage name Jean Alexander (born 24 February 1926), is a retired English television actress. She was best known to British television viewers as Hilda Ogden in the soap opera Coronation Street, a role she played from 1964 until 1987, and also as Auntie Wainwright in the long-running sitcom Last of the Summer Wine from 1988 to 2010. For her role in Coronation Street she received a 1987 BAFTA TV Award nomination for Best Actress. She retired from acting in 2012. She has lived for many years in Southport, Merseyside.

Biography

Although she aspired to become an actress, Alexander worked for five years as a library assistant in Liverpool before she began her acting career in 1949 at the Adelphi Guild Theatre in Macclesfield; she later worked in rep in Oldham, Stockport and York. During this time she worked as an actress, wardrobe mistress and stage manager. Her television debut was in the television police series Z-Cars. She first appeared in Coronation Street in 1961 as landlady Mrs Webb.