Shirley Stelfox

Early life

Stelfox was born at Dukinfield, Cheshire on 11 April 1941. She suffered from bilateral amblyopia, which left her short-sighted. She studied at RADA where her classmates included Edward Fox, John Thaw and Sarah Miles.

TV actress

After the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art Stelfox started straight at the BBC in a play called The Case Before You in which she played a 15 year old arsonist - where the prompter did not respond to her long pauses. In December 1960, she appeared in her first episode of Coronation Street. She would later play many different characters in the world-famous soap opera, including, in 1983, running a dating agency in which one of her customers was the entrance cue for Jack Duckworth. She was the first actress to play Hyacinth Bucket's randy sister Rose in the first series of Keeping Up Appearances, but was later replaced by Mary Millar. She appeared in several other well-known television series, including the successful Wicked Women, Making Out with Margi Clarke, Mrs Parkin in Heartbeat, - and Jean in Common as Muck, Juliet Bravo, Coronation Street, The Bill and Crossroads, and Inspector Morse, She played Jane Healy, Melanie Owen's mother, in an episode of EastEnders. She appeared in the short-lived series Albion Market.

Film roles

Stelfox played the mother of Julie Walters and Victoria Wood in the TV film Pat and Margaret (1994). But her best-known film role came as the "$2.00 Prostitute" in Nineteen Eighty-Four, a film adaptation of the George Orwell novel, starring John Hurt and Richard Burton. Somewhat typecast as a prostitute she played another in Terry Jones's comedy Personal Services (1987) based on the life of Madame Cyn, the brothel owner who entertained celebrities and politicians.

On the stage

Stelfox portrayed a stand-up comedian in Stand Up Sweetie Pie, directed by June Brown, the stalwart of EastEnders, who must have come across each other on set; it premièred in 1993 at the Nottingham Playhouse, rather than in the West End.

Personal life

Stelfox was married to Keith Edmundson for 3 years. She had a daughter, Helena from this marriage. She later married actor Don Henderson in 1979 and they were together until his death due to throat cancer in 1997. They lived in Stratford-upon-Avon, where she helped raise two stepchildren. She moved to rural Nottinghamshire after Henderson's death.

Stelfox died on 7 December 2015, aged 74, four weeks after being diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer.