Actress Anna Massey dies

Actress Anna Massey dies
Actress Anna Massey dies (Image credit: PA)

Veteran actress Anna Massey has died at the age of 73. Anna won a string of awards for her stage and TV roles, including a Bafta for her performance as a lonely spinster in the 1986 TV adaptation of Hotel du Lac. Her agent said in a statement: "Actress Anna Massey CBE passed away peacefully on Sunday 3rd July, with her husband and son by her side. "She will be remembered as a loving wife and mother, a cherished grandmother, a generous colleague and, always, a consummate professional. She will be greatly missed." Anna's film work included roles in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy, Possession with Gwyneth Paltrow and the adaptation of The Importance Of Being Earnest. Anna, who was well known for her supporting roles, often playing a spurned or repressed maiden aunt, had been suffering from cancer, her agent said later. She received a CBE for services to drama at Buckingham Palace in 2005. Divorced from the late actor Jeremy Brett, she was alone for 27 years until she met Russian scientist Uri Andres at a dinner party and married him three months later. Anna's TV period dramas included Tess Of The D'Urbervilles in 2008, Oliver Twist in 2007, and the BBC's version of Anthony Trollope's He Knew He Was Right in 2004. Most recently, she appeared in Poirot and Midsomer Murders in 2009. In 2006, she played Baroness Thatcher in the TV film Pinochet In Suburbia. Anna was born into the business - both her parents were actors, while her godfather was the veteran director John Ford.

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.