Lynn Farleigh

Early life

Farleigh was born in Bristol, Gloucestershire on 3 December 1942 to Joseph Sydney Farleigh and his wife Marjorie Norah (née Clark). She attended the Redland High School for Girls in Bristol, and trained for the stage at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Career

She made her first professional appearance in May 1962 in a production of Under Milk Wood at the Salisbury Playhouse, and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in October 1966, playing Castiza in The Revenger's Tragedy at Stratford upon Avon. She made her New York debut with the RSC in April 1967 at the Music Box Theatre, playing Ruth in a production of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming.

Her first London performance came in January 1968 as Helena in the RSC revival of All's Well That Ends Well. In the same Aldwych Theatre season she also played Amanda in The Relapse, August 1968, and Portia in Julius Caesar, November 1968.

In July 1969 at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs she appeared in the Peter Tegel double-bill as the Biology Mistress in Blim at School and Anna in Poet of the Anemones; and in the following year played Simone in The Friends, written and directed by Arnold Wesker (Round House, March 1970); and Beatrice Justine in Exiles by James Joyce, directed by Harold Pinter (Mermaid Theatre, November 1970).

Subsequent theatre performances include:

Television and film

Lynn Farleigh is perhaps best known for playing Helen Wycliffe in Wycliffe, Krupskaya opposite Patrick Stewart's Lenin in the historical BBC drama Fall of Eagles, and the glamorous Vivien Ashton (codename Solange) in the second series of the LWT secret agent series Wish Me Luck broadcast in 1989.

Some of her other TV appearances since 1964 include The Rivals, Bergerac, Eyeless in Gaza, Bill Brand, Steptoe and Son, Murder Most English, Z-Cars in which she played Ann Fazakerley, the 1978 miniseries The Word, the drama series Out and Bad Girls. She also appeared in the films Three into Two Won't Go (1969) and Voices (1973) and provided the voice of the cat in the animated film of Watership Down (1978).

She portrayed Mrs Bennet's sister, Mrs Phillips, in the 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. In 2013 and 2014, she played Nora White in EastEnders.