Trivia

Appeared on stage at the Royal National Theatre at the venerable age of 101.

After her first marriage ended, she lived with fellow actor, Nicholas "Beau" Hannen, from 1922 but they couldn't marry because Hannen's wife refused a divorce. In 1928 she legally changed her name to Athene Hannen. They were married after his wife's death in 1960.

She was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1959 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to drama.

Her father, secretary and advisor to a Greek millionaire, was obsessed with all things Greek and gave all of his daughters classical Greek names.

Plump, curmudgeonly British character actress, whose quirky personality and lived-in face enlivened many a performance as spinster aunt, indomitable dowager or pixillated old dear, over a period of six decades. She began on stage in 1908, in "The Truants", that year winning the RADA gold medal. In 1950, she was made President of the Council of RADA.

Stage actress who made her début in 1909

She claimed having never taken holidays, because she enjoyed her work too much.

In 1950, was elected lifelong president of the Theatrical Ladies Guild.

Athene was educated at Coombe Hill and at Bedford College, London, where she studied Restoration Comedy, which she was later to excel in as an actress..

Upon her death, her remains were interred at St. Mary's Churchyard, Mill Green, Station Road, Wargrave, Berkshire, England.

In 1989 she was honoured as "Personality of the Century" by the Grand Order of Water Rats.

Stepmother of Hermione Hannen.

She and her husband Nicholas Hannen were devout Christian Scientists.

She told an interviewer in later life that she wasn't made a Dame because, for most of her life, she lived with a man who wasn't her husband.

In 1922, she met and started living with fellow actor Nicholas "Beau" Hannen, son of Sir Nicholas Hannen. Hannen was married, and his wife refused a divorce. In 1928, Seyler formally changed her name to Athene Hannen, but she continued to use Seyler professionally. In 1960, she and Hannen were married after his wife died.

Her German-born grandparents moved to the United Kingdom, where her grandfather Philip Seyler was a merchant in London.

Athene Seyler was educated at Coombe Hill School in Surrey, a progressive co-educational school which disliked petitionary prayer and whose advanced biology classes studied Darwin's On the Origin of Species.

Seyler first appeared on the stage in 1909, and was initially known as a stage actress. She made her film debut in 1921, and subsequently became known for playing slightly dotty old ladies in many British films from the 1930s to the 1960s.

In 1990, at the age of 101, she appeared at the National Theatre, talking about her long life and career.

She also wrote The Craft of Comedy.

Her most memorable stage credits included Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals, Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest and a double-act, with her good friend Dame Sybil Thorndike, as the murderous spinster sisters in Arsenic and Old Lace.

She was also active in the South Place Ethical Society during the 1920s, where her father Clarence H. Seyler took his family for many years to hear Moncure Conway lecture as an alternative to attending a religious Sunday service. Clarence ran a class for the study of Herbert Spencer, contributed to the South Place magazine on rationalist matters and wrote a treatise on birth control which he circulated privately among his family.

Seyler took part in an anti-blood sports demonstration, during which pupils captured the fox from the local hunt.

She was also a regular cast member in screen adaptations of Charles Dickens' novels.

In 1988, at the age of 99, she was the castaway on radio's Desert Island Discs.

Although her silent film appearance in Pickwick (1921) is missing, she played the elderly fiancée in The Pickwick Papers (1952).

In 1933, Seyler together with Nicholas Hannen, took a company which included Hannen's daughter by his first marriage, Hermione Hannen, on a well-received tour of the Far East and Australia.

Seyler virtually retired from acting after 1970 but continued making public appearances until well into the 1980s, memorably as a guest of Terry Wogan on his eponymous BBC chat show.

On 14 February 1914, she married James Bury Sterndale-Bennett (1889-1941), a grandson of the composer Sir William Sterndale Bennett, and they had a daughter, Jane Ann (1917-2015).

Her film and television career lasted into the 1960s, and included roles in The Citadel (1938), Night of the Demon (1957) and The Avengers (1964, 1965).