She’s possibly most famous for taking over a beloved character and making it her own with Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, but Geraldine McEwan has enjoyed a long career on stage and screen. She died at the age of 82 on Friday following a stroke in October.
Born in Windsor, she got her start acting early, making her debut at the age of 14 at the city’s Theatre Royale. She quickly graduated to London’s West End, and went on to join the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon-Avon in 1961. There, she appeared in leading roles in plays such as Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet and Twelfth Night and ended up touring he world with various productions.
On the West End stage, she originated a leading role in Joe Orton’s Loot and appeared on Broadway in The School For Scandal, The Private Ear And The Public Eye and The Chairs, which won her a Tony nomination. Alongside contemporaries such as Albert Finney, Christopher Plummer and Laurence Olivier, she worked with the Royal National Theatre on plays including A Flea In Her Ear, Oh Coward! and The Browning Version, finding herself at the Olivier Awards in 1976 nominated in two separate categories.
She left her mark on television with more than just Marple – McEwan won praise for her work in The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, the 1985 take on Mapp & Lucia and Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, for which she won a TV BAFTA. More recently, she has appeared in Red Dwarf and Mulberry. On the big screen, she contributed memorable character work to films such as Henry V, Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Vanity Fair and The Magdalene Sisters.
McEwan is survived by her son Greg and daughter Claudia. Our thoughts are with her family.