Eleanor Bron
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| Eleanor Bron | |
|---|---|
| Born | 14 March 1938 Stanmore, Middlesex, London |
Eleanor Bron (born 14 March 1938[1]) is a British stage, film and television actress and authoress.
Contents |
[edit] Early life & family
Bron was born in Stanmore, London of Eastern European Jewish descent; her father shortened the surname to "Bron" from "Bronstein" when founding Bron's Orchestral Service.[2] She was educated at the North London Collegiate School and Newnham College, Cambridge.
Bron was married to the architect Cedric Price until his death in 2003. They had no children. Her brother is the veteran record producer Gerry Bron.[3]
[edit] Career
[edit] Early work
Bron began her career in the Cambridge Footlights revue of 1959, entitled The Last Laugh, in which Peter Cook also appeared. The addition of a female performer to the Footlights was a departure, having been until that point all-male, with female characters portrayed in drag. As with many others of the British satire boom, participation in the Footlights was a springboard to a long career in British comedy. In the ensuing years she would write and perform in dozens of productions for television and radio, her earliest work including such programmes as Where Was Spring a collaboration with John Fortune, Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life, and My Father Knew Lloyd George.
[edit] Film appearances
Her film appearances include the role of Ahme in the Beatles film, Help!, the doctor who grounds the Lothario played by Michael Caine in Alfie, the unattainable Margaret Spencer in Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's film Bedazzled, Hermione Roddice in Ken Russell's Women in Love, and The National Health. She appears in the film Two for the Road alongside Albert Finney, Audrey Hepburn and William Daniels. More recently she has appeared in the film adaptations of A Little Princess, The House of Mirth, Black Beauty and in Wimbledon.
[edit] Television work
She plays, through flashback, the recurring character of Patsy's mother in the sitcom, Absolutely Fabulous, an exuberantly horrible woman who "scattered bastard babies across Europe like a garden sprinkler". After giving birth, she would always say "Now take it away! And bring me another lover."
She also appeared as an art critic in a parody of an Andy Warhol documentary on the BBC sketch comedy show French and Saunders, written by and starring Jennifer Saunders of Absolutely Fabulous and Dawn French of The Vicar of Dibley.
She appeared in one episode ("Equal Opportunities") of the BBC series Yes Minister, playing a senior civil servant in Jim Hacker's Department. Hacker plans to promote her to strike a blow for equal opportunities.
Bron appeared in a brief scene in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who serial City of Death alongside John Cleese as art critics in an art gallery in Paris. The pair are admiring the TARDIS, thinking it to be a piece of art, when the Doctor (Tom Baker) and Romana (Lalla Ward) rush into it and it dematerialises. Bron's character, believing this to be part of the work, states that it is "Exquisite, absolutely exquisite!"
Later, she had a more substantial guest role in another Doctor Who television serial, 1985's Revelation of the Daleks. She has more recently also appeared in an audio drama based on Doctor Who by Big Finish Productions, (Loups-Garoux), in which she plays the part of wealthy heiress Ileana de Santos.
She collaborated with novelist and playwright Michael Frayn on the BBC programmes Beyond a Joke and Making Faces.
[edit] Stage appearances
In 1975 she appeared in the West End musical The Card. Throughout the 1980s she appeared in Amnesty International's Secret Policeman's Balls live benefit shows, working alongside Peter Cook and Rowan Atkinson. In 2005 she appeared in the Liverpool Empire Theatre in the musical play Twopence To Cross The Mersey. She appeared in the role of an abbess in Howard Brenton's play In Extremis, staged in Shakespeare's Globe in 2007. She has also recently appeared in the dramatized version of Pedro Almodovar's film All About My Mother which opened at the Old Vic theatre in the late summer of 2007.
Bron also gave the premiere performance of The Yellow Cake Revue, a series of pieces for voice and piano written in protest against uranium mining in the Orkney Islands by Peter Maxwell Davies.
[edit] Recent work
In 2001 and 2002 she has appeared in the BBC radio comedy sketch show, The Right Time, along with Graeme Garden, Paula Wilcox, Clive Swift, Roger Blake and Neil Innes. Another notable radio appearance was in The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in the 2002 episode "The Madness of Colonel Warburton". In 2006 she narrated the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of the Craig Brown book 1966 and All That.
[edit] Cultural influences
She is often credited as an inspiration for the name of the Beatles song "Eleanor Rigby". She is mentioned in the Yo La Tengo song "Tom Courtenay", in the line "dreaming 'bout Eleanor Bron, in my room with the curtains drawn...".
[edit] As a writer
She is the author of several books, including Life and Other Punctures, an account of bicycling in France and Holland on an early Moulton bicycle; and The Pillow Book of Eleanor Bron.
[edit] References
- ^ International Who's Who 2007
- ^ Westbrook, Caroline. "Gerry Bron interview", Something Jewish, 2007-04-03. Retrieved on 2007-04-24.
- ^ Interview with Gerry Bron
