Eileen Derbyshire

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Eileen Derbyshire
Born	October 6, 1930 (1930-10-06) (age 77) Urmston, England

Eileen Derbyshire (born October 6, 1930 in Urmston, near Manchester) is an English character actress, best known for playing Emily Bishop in Coronation Street. It is a role she has played continuously since 1961, when Emily was an assistant in a ladies' clothing shop called Gamma Garments. She is the longest-running female character ever in the show.

From the age of 17, Derbyshire was appearing in plays broadcast on the radio. After several small parts on television, she joined the cast of Coronation Street, firstly as an extra in episode 3, then as Miss Nugent in episode 15, when she became a regular. It took a year for the character to be given the forename 'Emily', however.

Derbyshire took a degree in teaching, trained at the Northern School of Music, and also passed her examination at the Royal Academy of Music. She began teaching speech and drama, but had always wanted to act. While on the bus one day, she passed Chorlton Repertory, and asked for an audition. She was enrolled as a student, and later became assistant stage manager. From there she joined Century Theatre's mobile touring company, and appeared in theatre all over the country, subsequently appearing in repertory theatre throughout Britain.

She married retired engineer Thomas Holt on April 1, 1965, and the following year, they had a son, Oliver. The couple have a large cottage in Cheshire, and Derbyshire's interests include opera, reading, going to concerts, and holidaying in Vienna and Venice.

Eileen Derbyshire has a reputation for reclusiveness. The Times has described her as a modern-day Garbo. She does not join the rest of the cast at awards ceremonies or other events, has never appeared on television out of character or discussed her private life in an interview, and has never yet appeared in any of the publicity videos on the Coronation Street website. Her son Oliver Holt has denied that she is reclusive, pointing out that she is simply private, and "one of the last of a dying breed of old-fashioned actresses who do it for the love of acting, not for all the attendant publicity" [1]. In 2005 she gave an extremely rare television interview to an ITV programme aimed at deaf viewers, speaking about working with the deaf actress Alison Briggs, who was playing Emily's niece, Freda Nugent. She was interviewed on the set and dressed in character.

In addition to this reclusive persona, she is known in the world of autograph collecting as a "non-signer", although she has been known to occasionally respond to letters.