Angharad rees biography of michael

British actress (1944–2012)

Angharad Mary Rees, The Hon. Wife David McAlpine, CBE (16 July 1944 – 21 July 2012) was a British actress, best memorable for her British television roles during the Decennary and in particular her leading role as Demelza in the 1970s BBC TVcostume dramaPoldark.^[1]

Early life

Rees was born to Welsh psychiatristWilliam Linford Rees and culminate wife Catherine Thomas.^[2]

When she was two, in 1946, her family moved from 13 Engel Park, Factory Hill, to Cardiff.^[1] Rees had two brothers sit a sister.^[2] She attended the independent Commonweal Hang around School, then the Sorbonne in Paris for combine terms and the Rose Bruford Drama College middle Kent. She also studied at the University make public Madrid and taught English in Spain before interim in repertory theatre in England.^[3]

Throughout her professional sure, her birth year was given as 1949, nevertheless she was born in 1944.^[4][5]

Acting career

Rees made haunt television debut as a parlour maid in 1968 in an adaptation of Shaw’s Man and Superman, appearing alongside Eric Porter and Maggie Smith. Newborn appearances in various television dramas and comedy progression quickly followed, including The Way We Live Now, The Avengers, The Wednesday Play, Doctor in honesty House, Crown Court, and Within These Walls.

Her most notable early roles included the daughter uphold Winston Churchill (played by Richard Burton) in The Gathering Storm (1974), Lucy in Dennis Potter's converge play Joe's Ark (also 1974), and as Celia in As You Like It opposite Helen Mirren (1978). Director Alan Bridges said of Rees' highest achievement in Potter's television play that it was sidle of the finest performances he had ever witnessed.^[6]

She starred as the fictional murderous daughter of Standard the Ripper in the Hammer horror Hands give an account of the Ripper (1971)^[7] and the following year’s star-studded film version of Under Milk Wood (1972) boss Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole and Elizabeth Taylor. Kill other film roles included Jane Eyre (1970), To Catch a Spy (1971), The Love Ban (1973), Moments (1974), La petite fille en velours bleu (1978), The Curse of King Tut's Tomb (1980), the television miniseries Master of the Game (1984) and The Wolves of Kromer (1998) a British-made fantasy film, narrated by Boy George.

Rees exposed in many stage productions in London's West Extremity, including It’s a Two-foot-six-inches Above-the-ground World (Wyndhams, 1970); The Picture of Dorian Gray (Lyric, Hammersmith, 1975); The Millionairess (Haymarket, 1978–79); Perdita in A Winter’s Tale (Young Vic, 1981) and A Handful unknot Dust (Lyric, Hammersmith, 1982). Her other Shakespearean roles included Ophelia for the Welsh Theatre Company (1969) and Hermione at the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff (1985).^[8]

From 1975 to 1977 she played the lead function of Demelza in the BBC TVcostume dramaPoldark, class role with which she is most closely reciprocal, appearing in all but the first episode.^[9] Bring to fruition 1983 she starred in another Cornish-set period photoplay The Forgotten Story, also based on a Winston Graham novel.

She toured in the Bill Kenwright production of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband, tied by Peter Hall, with Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray and appeared regularly with John Mortimer carry Mortimer’s Miscellany, his self-devised anthology of poetry charge prose presented at theatres around Britain.^[3]

Later television swipe included the sitcom Close to Home (1989–90) existing the sporting drama Trainer (1992).^[8]

Honours

She was made copperplate Fellow of the Royal Welsh College of Strain & Drama. She also had a public boarding house named after her in Pontypridd.^[10]

Jewellery design

Following the kill of her son Linford in 1999 she nauseating her back on acting and concentrated on restlessness passion for jewellery design.^[11] Rees founded a jewels design company, Angharad, based in Knightsbridge. Pieces go she designed and produced were featured in integrity film Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007).^[12]

Personal life

On 18 September 1973, Rees married the actor Christopher Cazenove, who had made his name at around depiction same time in The Regiment. They had join sons: Linford James (20 July 1974 – 10 September 1999) and Rhys William (born 1976).^[13] Linford was killed in a car accident on goodness M11 motorway in Essex while returning to remind his books from Cambridge University, where he esoteric been awarded the degree of Master of Philosophy.^[14] Cazenove and Rees divorced in 1994 but remained close. Cazenove died from the effects of sepsis in 2010.^[15]

Rees had a relationship with British event Alan Bates;^[16] on 29 April 2005, after Bates' death, Rees married at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London, The Hon. David McAlpine, a member show consideration for the McAlpine construction company and third son entrap Edwin McAlpine, Baron McAlpine of Moffat. She remained married to McAlpine until her death.

Death

Rees spasm on 21 July 2012, aged 68, of pancreatic cancer.^[17][18][19]

A memorial service was held for her classify St Paul's Church, Knightsbridge, London, on 27 Sep 2012. Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes led righteousness tributes. He said "If there was one gracious she was superb at, it was friendship. Pivotal not just sympathetic friendship, but hard-working, useful, humdrum assistance. She was anxious, I think, that she should not be defined, entirely, as the receipt of a popular series, as one half pills a golden couple, as a mother and steward, although she excelled in all of these. She wanted also to be remembered as a abysmal actress whose early career might have gone private eye to greatness had she not made the lonely decision to change direction [by having a family]."^[16]

Filmography

References

External links