Elizabeth Spriggs

Elizabeth Jean Spriggs (18 September 1929 – 2 July 2008) was an English actress born in Buxton, Derbyshire. She described her childhood as unhappy, later recalling that she grew up without affection. A mezzo-soprano, she trained in opera at the Royal College of Music and subsequently taught speech and drama in Coventry. Her first marriage, entered into at age 21, ended in separation; she left her husband and young daughter to pursue an acting career, a decision she described as the most painful of her life. She began her professional stage work at a repertory company in Stockport, Cheshire, and went on to work with companies in Birmingham and Bristol before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962.

Spriggs remained a regular presence in RSC productions under Peter Hall until 1976, taking on a wide range of Shakespearean roles. These included the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, Gertrude in Hamlet opposite David Warner, Calpurnia in Julius Caesar, Mistress Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. She also appeared in RSC productions of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance, Shaw's Major Barbara, and Dion Boucicault's London Assurance, in which she played Lady Gay Spanker alongside Donald Sinden. It was during the run of London Assurance that she met Murray Manson, a mini-cab driver and musician whom she married in 1977 as her third husband. Her first two marriages, to Kenneth Spriggs and RSC actor Marshall Jones, had both been dissolved.

Her Broadway appearance came in 1974 with London Assurance, for which she received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play and a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play, both in 1975.

When Hall moved from the RSC to the National Theatre in 1976, Spriggs joined him there. In the company's opening season she played Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit. Her subsequent National Theatre work included Volpone with Paul Scofield, The Country Wife, and Macbeth with Albert Finney. In 1978, she won the Society of West End Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Arnold Wesker's Love Letters on Blue Paper, playing the wife of a dying trade union leader; she had first performed the role on BBC television in 1976. Her later stage credits included a West End revival of J. B. Priestley's When We Are Married in 1986 and Arsenic and Old Lace at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1991.

Spriggs did not work extensively in television until the mid-1970s. Her credits included Frederic Raphael's The Glittering Prizes (1976), the BBC drama We, the Accused (1980), in which she starred as Eleanor Pressett, and the thirteen-part ITV drama Fox (1980), in which she played Connie, the head of a South London family. She appeared in three television plays by Alan Bennett — Afternoon Off (1979), Intensive Care (1982), and Our Winnie (1982) — and played Calpurnia and Mistress Quickly for the BBC's Shakespeare series. Additional television work included the ITV comedy series Shine on Harvey Moon (1982–85), the BBC adaptation of Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1990), the role of Mrs. Gamp in the BBC's Martin Chuzzlewit (1994), Mrs. Cadwallader in Middlemarch (1994), and recurring appearances in Midsomer Murders and Poirot. She also appeared in the Doctor Who serial Paradise Towers (1987) and the Children's BBC series Simon and the Witch (1987). In 1998, she was the subject of This Is Your Life, when Michael Aspel surprised her at Shepperton Studios.

Her film career began with Work Is a Four-Letter Word (1968) and Three into Two Won't Go (1969), both directed by Peter Hall. Later film roles included Richard's Things (1980), Impromptu (1991), and Paradise Road (1997). She played Mrs. Jennings in the 1995 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, for which she received a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and the Fat Lady in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001). Her final film, Is Anybody There? (2008) with Michael Caine, was released shortly after her death.

Spriggs died on 2 July 2008, at the age of 78. Her funeral and interment took place at Saint Mary the Virgin's Churchyard in Thame, Oxfordshire, attended by family and colleagues including Sinéad Cusack, Jeremy Irons, Robert Hardy, James Ellis, Lesley Sharp, and Peter Vaughan.