LIZ FRASER

(14 August 1930 - 6 September 2018)

Born Elizabeth Joan Winch, the actress Liz Fraser, who has died aged 88 from complications following an operation, was never a star but always enlivened any production in which she appeared. She had a natural talent for playing ordinary women coupled with a real flair for comedy, but she could also be a good character actress. She trained at the London School of Dramatic Art and, following a spell in repertory theatre, took minor film parts in Touch and Go (1955) with Jack Hawkins and The Smallest Show on Earth (1957). Television followed (Whacko-O!, The Sky Larks, Dixon of Dock Green) and odd film parts such as Davy, with Harry Secombe, Dunkirk with Richard Attenborough, Wonderful Things! with Frankie Vaughan, and Alive and Kicking with Sybil Thorndike, but her real break came in the Boulting Brothers’ I’m All Right Jack, playing Peter Sellers’ daughter Cynthia Kite, a role that brought her a Bafta nomination for most promising newcomer. Her career continued with a mix of film and television and her comedic highlights include The Night We Dropped a Clanger, Desert Mice, Two Way Stretch, Doctor in Love, The Bulldog Breed, The Pure Hell of St Trinian’s and The Rebel with Tony Hancock, with whom she had worked on his TV series. She was in four Carry Ons – Regardless, Cruising, Cabby and Behind – and also Raising the Wind from the same team. Her fifty-year plus career also included much television: Rumpole of the Bailey, Robin’s Nest, The Professionals, The Avengers, Birds of a Feather, Minder, The Bill, Miss Marple, Last of the Summer Wine, Foyle’s War and Holby City. On film she appeared in The Painted Smile, The Americanisation of Emily, The Family Way, Up the Junction, Dad’s Army (as Mrs Pike), The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle and Chicago Joe and the Showgirl, her final cinema film in 1990. Liz Fraser continued to work on TV until 2007 but returned in 2018 for an episode of Midsomer Murders. She was married briefly to travelling salesman Peter Yonwin and then to TV producer and director Bill Hitchcock, who died in 1974. Her autobiography, Liz Fraser… and Other Characters, was published in 2012 by Signum Books.

MICHAEL DARVELL