Jean Anderson

Jean Anderson, born Mary Jean Heriot Powell on 12 December 1907 in Eastbourne, Sussex, was an English actress who worked extensively across stage, television, and film over a career spanning more than six decades. The daughter of Scottish parents, she grew up in Guildford, Surrey, and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art between 1926 and 1928. She died on 1 April 2001 at the age of 93.

Anderson made her professional stage debut in 1929 in Many Waters at the Prince's Theatre, Bristol, alongside fellow RADA graduate Robert Morley. In 1934 she joined the Cambridge Festival Theatre, where she appeared in Somerset Maugham's The Circle and Yahoo by Lord Longford. The following year she played Lady Macbeth with The Seagull Players in Leeds. In 1936 she joined Lord Longford's Gate Theatre company from Dublin for their season at the Westminster Theatre in London, appearing in Ah, Wilderness!, Carmilla, The Moon in the Yellow River, Youth's the Season . . . ?, and Yahoo. When the company returned to Dublin, Anderson accompanied them and performed regularly at the Gate Theatre for three years, taking part in productions of As You Like It, The Duchess of Malfi, The Cherry Orchard, and Doctor Faustus.

After returning to London in 1940, Anderson joined the Players' Theatre Club, which served as a gathering place during the war years. When director Leonard Sachs was called up for military service, she assumed responsibility for running the club and continued in that role for the duration of the war. Her postwar stage work included 1066 and All That, Don Juan in Hell, The Apple Cart, and The Moon in the Yellow River with Jack Hawkins. She later appeared in Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, directed by Dame Ngaio Marsh, as well as Hedda Gabler and an all-star production of Uncle Vanya at Hampstead Theatre. One of her most prominent later stage credits was Les Liaisons Dangereuses with Alan Rickman and the Royal Shakespeare Company, which transferred from London to Broadway in 1987. Her final stage appearance was in Terence Rattigan's Harlequinade in 1988.

Anderson's television career began in 1947 with Weep for the Cyclops on the BBC. She played the mother in two separate BBC adaptations of The Railway Children, in 1951 and 1957, and reprised her role in The Moon in the Yellow River for the BBC in 1953. She became widely recognized for her portrayal of Mary Hammond, a formidable matriarch in the BBC drama The Brothers, which ran from 1972 to 1976, and for her role as Lady Jocelyn Holbrook in the Second World War series Tenko, broadcast between 1982 and 1985. Her many other television credits included Police Surgeon, Maigret, The Odd Man, The Man in Room 17, The Borderers, Paul Temple, Codename, Oil Strike North, Miss Marple, Inspector Morse, Campion, Rab C. Nesbitt, Keeping Up Appearances, and Hetty Wainthropp Investigates. Her final television appearance was in Keeping Mum on the BBC in 1998. In addition to her stage and television work, Anderson appeared in 46 films. Her last screen role was in Conor McPherson's film adaptation of Samuel Beckett's Endgame, shot in Dublin shortly before her death.

In 1934 Anderson married Peter Powell, who directed her in numerous productions over the years. The couple divorced in 1949 and had one daughter, Aude Powell, who became a talent agent representing clients including Rik Mayall and Billy Boyd. Anderson maintained a home in Barnes, London, and in her later years relocated to Eden Valley in the north-west of England to be near her daughter. Her personal interests included collecting porcelain figurines and horse racing. In 1985 she was the subject of the television program This Is Your Life, on which she was surprised by host Eamonn Andrews.