Anne Reid

Anne Reid is an English actress born on 28 May 1935 in Newcastle upon Tyne, the daughter of Colin Norman Reid and Annie Eliza (née Weetman). She grew up in Redcar with her parents and three older brothers, attending John Emmerson Batty primary school and the White House School before enrolling at Penrhos College, a boarding school in North Wales, from the age of 11. Her father's work as a foreign correspondent for The Daily Telegraph took him abroad, and Reid visited her parents during school holidays in India, Tehran, and Beirut. After leaving school she moved to London to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, subsequently working as a stage manager and in repertory theatre before pursuing a performing career across stage, film, and television.

Reid made early television appearances in programmes including The Benny Hill Show (1957), Hancock's Half Hour (1957), and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1958), but her first major acting role came when she joined the cast of the soap opera Coronation Street in August 1961, initially contracted for two months. She played Valerie Tatlock, who later became Valerie Barlow through her on-screen marriage to Ken Barlow on 1 August 1962, a wedding watched by 15.8 million viewers. The character became a mother to twins Susan and Peter in 1965, an event that prompted Granada Television to receive congratulation gifts addressed to the fictional couple. In 1968 Reid took on one of her most demanding storylines when Valerie was held hostage by a rapist. Reid announced her departure from the programme in November 1970, and on 27 January 1971 Valerie Barlow was written out of the series, dying after being electrocuted by a hairdryer with a faulty plug, in an episode watched by 18.26 million viewers. The subsequent episodes depicting the aftermath and funeral drew an audience of 18.92 million.

Following a break from acting to raise her son, during which she made occasional television appearances for Granada including Crown Court, Reid resumed her career in the 1980s. She became a regular collaborator with Victoria Wood, appearing in Victoria Wood as Seen on TV, the series Victoria Wood in 1989, and the drama Pat and Margaret in 1994. From 1998 to 2000 she played Jean in the BBC comedy series dinnerladies, written by and starring Wood. Her television work across this period also included Boon (1988), Casualty (1992), Heartbeat (in two separate roles in 1993 and 1997), Hetty Wainthropp Investigates (1996), and the ITV adaptation of Catherine Cookson's The Wingless Bird (1997), in which she played Alice Conway. She appeared in the Doctor Who serial The Curse of Fenric, broadcast in October 1989, and returned to the series on 31 March 2007 in the episode Smith and Jones, playing Florence Finnegan, a shape-shifting alien known as a Plasmavore.

Reid's film career includes voicing Wendolene Ramsbottom in the Wallace and Gromit short A Close Shave (1995) and appearing in Love and Death on Long Island (1997). Her performance in The Mother (2003) earned her the London Film Critics' Circle Award for British Actress of the Year and a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. She played Leslie Tiller in Hot Fuzz (2007) and appeared in Cemetery Junction (2010).

Her television credits continued to accumulate through the 2000s and 2010s, encompassing Midsomer Murders (2003), The Booze Cruise (2003), Life Begins (2004–2006), Bleak House (2005), Jane Eyre (2006), The Bad Mother's Handbook (2007), Shameless (2008), In Love with Barbara (2008), Agatha Christie's Marple (2009), Ladies of Letters (2009–2010), Upstairs Downstairs (2010), Marchlands (2011), and the final Agatha Christie's Poirot mystery, Curtain: Poirot's Last Case (2013), in which she played Daisy Luttrell. She guest-starred in the first episode of Inside No. 9 in 2014 and took part in the BBC genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are? in September 2015.

In 2012 Reid began starring as Celia Dawson alongside Sir Derek Jacobi in the BBC romantic comedy-drama Last Tango in Halifax, a role she continued through 2020. The performance earned her a nomination for the 2013 British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. She starred in Years and Years (2019), playing family matriarch Muriel Deacon alongside Emma Thompson, and from 2019 to 2023 appeared as Lady Denham in the ITV adaptation of Jane Austen's unfinished novel Sanditon. In 2023 she starred alongside Timothy Spall and Éanna Hardwicke in the BBC true-crime drama The Sixth Commandment, playing Ann Moore-Martin, a role that brought her a second nomination for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress at the 2024 ceremony. She was also announced as part of the cast of the BBC drama series Riot Women, which broadcast in late 2025.

Reid's stage career extended to Broadway, where she appeared in 2025 in a production of Oedipus Rex.