FELICITY KENDALL. Born in Birmingham, England, 25 September 1946. Education: 6 convents in India. Married: one son from first marriage; 2) Michael Rudman, 1983; one son. On stage from 1947 (age 9 months); grew up touring with parents' theatre company in India and the Far East; in film, from 1965; London stage debut in Minor Murder, 1967; in television, from 1968. Recipient: Variety Club Awards, 1974, 1979, 1984; Clarence Derwent Award, 1980; Evening Standard Best Actor Award, 1989. Address: c/o Chatto & Linnit, Prince of Wales Theatre, Coventry Street, W1V 7FE, London, England.

TELEVISION SERIES

1975-77     The Good Life
1980-1982 Solo
1985-1986 The Mistress
1994         Honey for Tea

TELEVISION MINISERIES

1991 Camomile Lawn

TELEVISION PLAYS (selection)

1968 The Mayfly and the Frog
1971 Crime of Passion
1973 The Woodlanders
1978 Clouds of Glory
1979 Twelfth Night
1982 On the Razzle (for Great Performances)

FILMS

Shakespeare Wallah, 1965; Love Story, 1974; Edward VII, 1975; The Good Life, 1976; Valentino, 1977; The Mistress, 1985.

STAGE

A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1947; Minor Murder, 1967, Henry V, 1968; The Promise, 1968; Back to Methuselah, 1970; A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1970; Kean, 1970; Much Ado About Nothing, 1971; Romeo and Juliet, 1972; 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, 1972; The Three Arrows, 1972; The Norman Conquests, 1974; Once Upon a Time, 1976; Arms and the Man, 1978; Clouds, 1978; Amadeus, 1979; Othello, 1980; On the Razzle, 1981; The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, 1982; The Real Thing, 1982; Jumpers, 1985; Made In Bangkok, 1986; Hapgood, 1988; Much Ado About Nothing, 1989; Ivanov, 1989; Hidden Laughter, 1990; Tartuffe, 1991; Heartbreak House, 1992.

 

 

   

Felicity Kendal first emerged as a favourite actress in British situation comedy in the 1970s and went on to vary her repertoire with television dramas, films, and stage plays with considerable success. She spent her childhood in India and had an early introduction to the theatre on tour with the Shakespearean company run by her parents, both established theatrical performers. She made her debut on the London stage in 1967 and subsequently confirmed her reputation as a popular stage star with appearances in such plays as Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests (1974), Michael Frayn's Clouds (1978), Peter Shaffer's Amadeus (1980), Tom Stoppard's Hapgood (1988), and Chekhov's Ivanov (1989), for which she won the London Evening Standard Best Actress Award.

Kendal's theatrical links secured for her a first television role in The Mayfly and the Frog, which starred John Gielgud, and she made a good impression in supporting roles in such subsequent productions as Man in a Suitcase, The Woodlanders, The Persuaders, Edward VII, and Home and Beauty, among others. Producers liked her girlish good looks and bubbly confidence and audiences too quickly warmed to her.

Kendal's whimsical, puckish charm and endearingly good-humoured outlook made her ideal for the role that was destined to establish her as a television star--that of Barbara Good in the BBC's The Good Life, in which she partnered Richard Briers as a suburban couple determined to lead a life of independent self-sufficiency. Loyal to the point of lunacy, and ever-fetching even in mud-stained jeans and knotted headscarf, she won universal praise as the pert and long-suffering young wife of Briers, striving to understand the frustrations of her wayward cereal designer-turned-smallholder husband as he painfully sought to put some meaning back into his life by turning their Surbiton house and garden into a small-scale farm. The accessibility of the central characters, perfectly played by Briers and Kendal, with Paul Eddington and Penelope Keith as their neighbours the Leadbeatters, ensured stardom for all four of them and a lasting place for all four performers in public affections. As a direct result of the programme's success, the number of smallholdings in Britain shot up to a record 51,000 by 1980.

After four seasons of The Good Life, the way was open for the four performers to develop their own solo careers. Kendal herself was showcased in two further sitcoms that centred around her alone. In Carla Lane's Solo she returned to the theme of self-sufficiency, playing Gemma Palmer, a vulnerable but resolutely independent 30-year-old woman who throws out her faithless boyfriend and gives up her job in an attempt to reassert control of her life. In The Mistress, a rather more controversial sitcom also written by Carla Lane, she was florist Maxine, trying to cope with the guilt and confusions involved in carrying on an affair with the married Luke Mansel (played by Jack Galloway). Some viewers disliked this last series, objecting to the girlish and rather innocent Felicity Kendal they remembered from The Good Life wrestling with such a dubious issue as adultery as she awaited her lover in her cosy pink flat, in the company of her pet rabbits, and pondered how to keep the affair secret from Luke's suspicious wife (played by Jane Asher).

Always an intelligent and sensitive actress, Kendal has been by no means confined to sitcoms, however. By way of contrast, in 1978 she played Dorothy Wordsworth in Ken Russell's biopic Clouds of Glory and later on she appeared with success in the miniseries The Camomile Lawn. In Honey for Tea, though, she was back in more familiar sitcom territory, playing American widow Nancy Belasco.

-David Pickering