Celia Gregory; An accomplished and dedicated actor, she was a familiar TV face
Hyfler/Rosner
An accomplished and dedicated actor, she was a familiar TV
face
Cherie Lunghi and Allan Corduner
The Guardian,
Friday September 26 2008
In the 1970s Celia Gregory, who has died aged 58, appeared
on the Sunday Times list of Britain's most promising
actresses. During the ensuing 20 years, her talent and
dedication carried her career from strength to strength.
She appeared on the West End stage with Laurence Olivier,
Joan Plowright and Frank Finlay in 1973 in Eduardo de
Filippo's Saturday, Sunday, Monday, directed by Franco
Zeffirelli. In 1978 she starred opposite Paul Scofield in
Ronald Harwood's play A Family. On television, she appeared
as Ruth Anderson in the 1976 BBC series Survivors and played
opposite Sam Neill in Reilly: Ace of Spies in 1983.
Her copious TV work also included Hammer House of Horror,
The Professionals, Bergerac, Tales of the Unexpected, Ruth
Rendell Mysteries and The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, with
Jeremy Brett in the title role. Her films included Agatha
(1979), with Dustin Hoffman and Vanessa Redgrave, The Inside
Man (1984), with Dennis Hopper, and Peter Greenaway's The
Baby of Mācon (1993), her last film role.
We first met Celia when we joined the Tyneside Theatre
Company, Newcastle in 1973. For us, fresh from our
respective drama schools, Celia seemed the "seasoned pro",
having by then completed a season at Lancaster rep. When she
walked into the room on our first day, all heads turned.
Celia radiated beauty effortlessly, inside and out. Hers was
a sensual beauty not unlike Ava Gardner's, with dancing
eyes, and an earthy, naughty laugh.
She was born in London but her parents divorced and her
mother remarried, to a German industrialist, so she grew up
in Switzerland, Germany and Holland. She learned German,
French, Portuguese and Italian. As well as her two sisters,
she gained three stepbrothers who had been raised in Brazil.
Their love of all things Latin inspired Celia's
guitar-playing and wonderful singing.
She and her sisters were sent to boarding school at Moira
House in Eastbourne, Sussex. Celia went to finishing school
in Italy before training at Studio 68 drama school in
London. Despite her privileged background, she loved the
freedom of the actor's life and the company of creative
people. She was equally comfortable dining at the Ivy or
picnicking in the rain.
She seemed to us so exotic and such a woman of the world,
with innate elegance and taste. She loved the fine things in
life and always dressed with great flair, half jet-set and
half Gypsy. Friends had to be careful not to admire
something Celia was wearing because she would take it off
there and then and hand it over. Her heart was huge and her
generosity was boundless, qualities that suffused her acting
roles.
She was not a technical actor; her brilliance was born out
of raw intelligence, understanding of people and an appetite
for life. She possessed that rare quality, stage presence.
During our year in Newcastle, she played Masha in The Three
Sisters with insight and experience beyond her 24 years, and
her Gertrude to Jack Shepherd's Hamlet was maternal and
passionate.
After marrying Keith Bender and having two children, Charles
in 1984 and Peter in 1987, Celia continued to work
occasionally until 1993, when she chose to devote more time
to her family. Family meant everything to her. Christmas at
her home followed the German tradition of being celebrated
on Christmas Eve, and even if times were lean, she would lay
a beautiful table with the family linen and silver, gather
her loved ones around her and pamper everyone. The evening
would usually end with her playing her guitar and belting
out her beloved Brazilian songs.
She is survived by her sons, her sisters Leyla and Yvonne,
and her brothers, Klaus, Uli and Andreas. Her marriage ended
in divorce.
Jan Sargent writes ... From the very first time I worked
with Celia, it was her ability to transform that impressed,
from the plaintive, funny, innocent and complex Jo in A
Taste of Honey, to the ravishing, passionate Masha in The
Three Sisters, devouring Vershinin with a glance. She was
incapable of false delivery and lived every part as if it
were her last.
She became my muse as a director, and when I moved to TV,
whether it was the mother of a lost child in the Ruth
Rendell Mysteries, a sophisticated fraudster in Perfect
Scoundrels or other parts in Casualty or Juliet Bravo, she
was always my first choice. Her translucent beauty, loved by
the camera, her grace on stage and her husky voice remain
vivid, and the generosity she lavished on her friends was,
like her talent, wholehearted and uncompromising.
· Celia Christine Gregory, actor, born September 23 1949;
died September 8 2008
