Penelope Keith
Dame Penelope Anne Constance Keith, DBE, DL is an English actress and presenter. She is primarily known for her roles in the British sitcoms The Good Life and To the Manor Born. She succeeded Lord Olivier as president of the Actors’ Benevolent Fund after his death in 1989.
About Penelope Keith in brief
Dame Penelope Anne Constance Keith, DBE, DL is an English actress and presenter. She is primarily known for her roles in the British sitcoms The Good Life and To the Manor Born. She succeeded Lord Olivier as president of the Actors’ Benevolent Fund after his death in 1989. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to the arts and to charity. Keith joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1963, and went on to win the 1976 Olivier Award for Best Comedy Performance for the play Donkeys’ Years. Since 2000, she has worked mainly in the theatre, with her roles including Madam Arcati in Blithe Spirit and Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest. Keith has appeared in six other sitcoms, including Executive Stress, No Job for a Lady and Next of Kin.
She won a second BAFTA award as best actress for The Norman Conquests in 1978. In 1988, she hosted the ITV panel show What’s On Approval? with Frederick Lonsdale. She also had the role in a TV adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Spider’s Web of a Lady. She has also appeared in a production of Frederick Ldale’s What’s on Approval of A Lady? in which she played the lead role of the Duchess of Cornwall. Keith is a member of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Royal College of Music. Her father, an army officer who was a Major by the end of the Second World War, left her mother Connie when Keith was a baby, and she spent her early years in Clacton-on-Sea and Clapham. When she was eight years old, her mother remarried and Penelope adopted her stepfather’s surname, Keith.
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