Dame Penelope Keith, the actress who brought to life two of Britain's most cherished sitcom snobs, has died at the age of 86. Her family announced on Monday that she "died peacefully whilst living with cancer at her home in Surrey where she had lived for more than 50 years."
Felicity Kendal, her co-star in The Good Life, led the tributes, calling her a "comic genius" who was "a joy to know and work with". Sue Perkins remembered her on Instagram as "creator of some of the greatest sit com characters of all time". Broadcaster Gyles Brandreth said: "Hers was indeed a good life." Former culture secretary Sir Jeremy Hunt, a neighbour in Milford, posted: "She helped Britain laugh at itself... and brought happiness to millions."
“Dame Penelope Keith, star of The Good Life and To the Manor Born, dies aged 86 after cancer battle.”
Keith's defining role came in 1975 when she was cast as Margo Leadbetter, the disapproving and snobbish neighbour in The Good Life. The show focused on a couple attempting self-sufficiency in Surbiton and drew 20 million viewers weekly. For her performance, she won a Bafta in 1977. A year later she won a second Bafta for The Norman Conquests, the televised version of Alan Ayckbourn's trilogy. In 1979, she took on the role of widowed aristocrat Audrey fforbes-Hamilton in To the Manor Born, a part that drew 26 million viewers for a single 1981 episode. Lissa Evans noted: "Margo Leadbetter was snobbish, humourless and entitled, and Penelope Keith managed to make her into one of the most adored... characters ever seen on a sitcom."
Born Penelope Anne Constance Hatfield on 2 April 1940 in Sutton, Surrey, her early life was far from the privilege of her characters. Her biological father left when she was two, and she often lived with her grandparents in Clapham, feeling unloved by her stepfather. Turned down by a top drama school for being too tall, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1963. "I was very tall and very plain," she said, "but I wasn't unhappy about it. I knew I wasn't going to get very far on my looks so I thought 'I suppose I better be the gag girl'." In 1978 she married a twice-divorced policeman, Rodney, and they remained together until her death. Despite her private cancer battle, she never complained, embodying the "keep calm and carry on" spirit that made her a national treasure.