Mary Peach

Mary E. Peach (20 October 1934 – 26 January 2025) was a South African-born British actress who worked across film, television, and stage. Born in Durban to Cyrial and May Peach, she built a career spanning several decades in British and American productions before appearing on Broadway in 1987 in the play Page Pygmalion.

Peach first gained significant attention with a BAFTA nomination for most promising newcomer for her work in the 1959 film Room at the Top. She subsequently appeared opposite Rock Hudson in A Gathering of Eagles and took part in the 1970 musical film Scrooge, an adaptation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol featuring Albert Finney in the title role. Her television work was equally extensive. She appeared as a regular cast member in the series Couples, Inside Story, Fox, and the 1966 BBC adaptation of The Three Musketeers. She also appeared in the Doctor Who serial The Enemy of the World and played Colonel Tanya Smolenko, a Russian counter-espionage agent, in the 1967 episode of The Saint titled "The Gadget Lovers." In 1978 she starred opposite Ian McShane in Disraeli. Among her other notable television roles, she played Mae, known as Sister Woman, in the BBC production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which featured Natalie Wood, Robert Wagner, Sir Laurence Olivier, and Maureen Stapleton. When Diana Rigg departed The Avengers in 1968, Peach was among the actresses considered to take on the role of Steed's new assistant.

In her personal life, Peach married film producer Thomas Clyde on 18 May 1961 at the Chelsea Register Office in London. The two had met on the set of the 1960 film Follow That Horse!, which Clyde produced. They separated in the 1980s and later divorced. Peach subsequently married screenwriter and director Jimmy Sangster in 1995, a union that lasted until Sangster's death in 2011.

Peach died on 26 January 2025, at the age of 90.