Susan Fleetwood

Susan Maureen Fleetwood^[1] (21 September 1944 in St. Andrews, Scotland – 29 September 1995 in Salisbury, England) was a leading British classical actress and star of the BBC television series Chandler & Co.^[2]

Personal life

Fleetwood was born in St. Andrews, Scotland, the daughter of Bridget Maureen (née Brereton) and John Joseph Kells Fleetwood,^[3] an RAF officer.^[1] She was a sister of musician Mick Fleetwood. The service family was stationed in Egypt in the years before the Suez crisis and afterwards in Norway where John Fleetwood received a NATO appointment, and where Susan received her first role as the Old Testament Joseph in a school play. On her return to England she was encouraged to take up drama by a nun at a convent school, winning a scholarship to RADA at the age of sixteen. She never married.^[1] She died in Salisbury, England, at the age of 51, after a ten-year battle with ovarian cancer.^[1]

Stage

After training with RADA, where a student production won Fleetwood the Bancroft gold medal, in 1964 she joined the company of the Liverpool Everyman theatre, where her fellow student Terry Hands had been appointed director. When Hands moved to the RSC in 1967, she followed. In 1968 at Stratford she gave two commanding performances: in the relatively unpromising part of Cassandra in Troilus and Cressida and as Regan in Lear. In 1969, under the direction of Hands, she movingly doubled the parts Thaisa and Marina in Pericles. In 1974, she played Imogen in John Barton's production of Cymbeline. Many principal roles followed, until in 1977 the former RSC director Peter Hall persuaded her to join him in the National Theatre company where, in addition to playing Ophelia to Albert Finney's Hamlet, she was offered parts from a wider repertory of plays. In the early 1980s she appeared in seasons with both companies; her last season with the RSC was 1990-91.^[4]

Filmography

• Persuasion (1995) as Lady Russell
• Chandler & Co (1995 BBC Television) as Kate Phillips
• The Buddha of Suburbia (1993) (miniseries) as Eva Kay
• Shakespeare: The Animated Tales (1992) (miniseries) as Gertrude the Queen (voice)
• Six Characters in Search of an Author (1992) (TV) as The Mother
• The Krays (1990) as Rose
• Summer's Lease (1989 Masterpiece Theatre) as Molly Pargeter
• White Mischief (1987) as Gwladys: Lady Delamere
• The Sacrifice (1986)
• Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) as Mrs. Dribb
• Heat and Dust (1983) as Mrs. Crawford, the Burra Memsahib (The Nineteen Twenties in the Civil Lines at Satipur)
• Clash of the Titans (1981) as Athena
• The Good Soldier (1981 Granada Television) as Leonora
• The Watercress Girl (1972 Granada Television) as Mary McDowell

References

External links

• RSC performance database
• Susan Fleetwood at the Internet Movie Database
• Obituary The Independent

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