Jean Marsh, the Emmy-winning actress and co-creator behind the acclaimed ’70s ITV period drama Upstairs, Downstairs, has died at the age of 90.
Her cause of death was a result of complications from dementia, her close friend Michael Lindsay-Hogg, told the New York Times, which first reported the news.
Before there was Downton Abbey, the seminal series — set at the turn of the 20th century across nearly three decades of Edwardian England — traced the lives of the fortunate Bellamy family and its servants, set against the backdrop of the era’s sociopolitical upheaval. Marsh starred as Mrs. Rose Buck, the household’s parlormaid, winning a Lead Actress Emmy for the role in 1975 (she was also nominated the year prior and year following). The British series ran from 1971 through 1975, encompassing 68 episodes. It was later revived in 2010 for two seasons for BBC One, tracing the family after the events of the mothership under a new king and featuring Marsh reprising her role.
Born Jean Lyndsay Torren Marsh on July 1, 1934, in London, she showed an early interest in performance, taking dance lessons as a child and later attending repertory school. In the late ’50s, she appeared in John Gielgud’s Broadway adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, playing Hero. Around this time, she began appearing on television, racking up credits in works like The Twilight Zone and Doctor Who.
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Marsh’s other notable credits include Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy, war epic The Eagle Has Landed, ABC sitcom 9 to 5, 1985’s Return to Oz, the Val Kilmer-starring and Ron Howard-directed Willow and an uncredited role in Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra. She also co-created another series, 1991’s The House of Eliott, about two aspiring fashion designers in 1920s London.
In 2011, she suffered a stroke and heart attack shortly after the Upstairs, Downstairs revival began filming, but told the Daily Mail later on that she retained an optimistic outlook on life: “I suppose I do have a kind of quiet energy and I’m enchanted by people. I look at them and think: ‘Oh, he’s bought a wonderful knobbly carrot.’ Everything I notice.”
In 2012, she was awarded the Order of the British Empire.
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