CHARLOTTE CORNWELL

(26 April 1949 - 16 January 2021)

The British actress Charlotte Cornwell, who has died from cancer aged 71, was equally at home in the theatre, on television or on film. She had an all-round talent for any medium into which she was cast. She trained at the Webber-Douglas Academy and the National Youth Theatre, and made her professional stage debut at the Bristol Old Vic. She later worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford and in London in plays by Shakespeare and Brecht, as well as modern playwrights such as Pam Gems, Steve Gooch, David Rudkin and Barrie Keeffe. At the National Theatre, she was in Congreve, Shaw, Sheridan, Ayckbourn, Athol Fugard, Chekhov and Shakespeare plus many more besides. She was on television from 1972 and made a great impression in two series of Howard Schumann’s Rock Follies with Julie Covington and Rula Lenska. She was also in Bognor, a comedy series with David Horovitch. On film she started in Stardust (1974) with David Essex, then The Brute, Peter Medak’s The Krays, Clint Eastwood’s White Hunter, Black Heart, The Russia House, from the novel by John Le Carrḗ (aka David Cornwell: Charlotte was his half-sister), Philip Noyce’s The Saint with Val Kilmer, and Couples Retreat with Vince Vaughn, her last feature film (in 2009). From 2004 to 2012 Charlotte Cornwell moved to the US to teach acting at the University of Southern California School of Dramatic Arts. Unmarried, Charlotte had a daughter, Nancy, by the actor Kenneth Cranham.

MICHAEL DARVELL