Stephanie Cole

Stephanie Cole
Cole on set filming Series 4 of 'Doc Martin' in Port Isaac, June 2009
Born	Patricia Stephanie Cole 5 October 1941 (1941-10-05) Solihull, Warwickshire, England
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1968–present
Spouse	Henry Marshall (1973–86) (divorced) 1 child Peter Birrel (1998–2004) (his death)

Stephanie Cole, OBE (born 5 October 1941) is an English stage, television, radio, and film actress, best known for playing characters a great deal older than her actual age.

Early life

Born in Solihull, Cole lived in Warwickshire. She trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School 1958–1960 and went on to consolidate her acting skills in repertory theatres around the United Kingdom. She made her stage debut at the age of seventeen playing the 45 - 65 year-old Madame Arcati in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit. At the age of 63 she returned to the same role when the play was revived at the West End's Savoy Theatre in 2004.

Television and radio career

One of her most recognised and popular roles was of Dr Beatrice Mason in the 1980s television series Tenko, a drama which chronicled the lives of British women in Singapore after the Japanese invasion and their consequent confinement in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. The series was explicit in its portrayal of the horrific conditions and brutality faced by the women during their imprisonment, and dealt with issues such as rape, stillbirth, lesbianism, suicide, abortion and euthanasia. Cole played the role of the stern, officious yet kindly doctor over three series and a one-off special between 1981 and 1985.

During this same period, and by now in her very early forties, she also played the elderly, paranoid and morose customer Mrs Delphine Featherstone (nicknamed "The Black Widow") in the BBC comedy Open All Hours. Mrs Featherstone was the only rival to Nurse Gladys Emmanuel for the affections of shopkeeper Arkwright, played by Ronnie Barker, although she was attracted to him only because she liked his stingy ways. Arkwright was scared of her advances and often hid when he saw her approaching the shop.

In 1987 Cole joined actors including Thora Hird, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters and Patricia Routledge in the award-winning first series of Talking Heads, a series of dramatic monologues written for BBC television by British playwright Alan Bennett. Cole performed the role of Muriel to great acclaim during the half-hour monologue "Soldiering On". In later years Cole would repeat her performance of this now famous monologue on both the London stage and for BBC radio.

Another of Cole's famous roles was of the bad-tempered ex-photojournalist Diana Trent in the sitcom Waiting for God which ran from 1990 to 1994. The role of Diana Trent was of a woman in her sixties or seventies, although Cole was actually 48 years old when she started the first series of the show. She was also two decades younger than her leading man, Graham Crowden. Cole received the 1992 Best TV Comedy Actress award at the British Comedy Awards for the role.

From 2004 Cole starred alongside Martin Clunes and Caroline Catz in the ITV comedy-drama, Doc Martin, playing Joan Norton, aunt of Clunes's character Dr Martin Ellingham. This was one of her few recent roles where she played a character who was actually close to her real age; her character was killed off by a heart attack at age 71 (Cole's actual age at the time: 69) in the first episode of the series in 2011, although this happened off-screen. In 2006 Cole starred alongside Victoria Wood in the BAFTA award winning World War II drama Housewife 49 as Mrs Waite, the local head of the WRVS. Cole also had a small role in the 2008 romantic comedy Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, as Miss Pettigrew's grumpy boss, Miss Holt.

In April 2011, Cole joined the cast of Coronation Street, playing the mother of regular character Roy Cropper.

She has also recently appeared in the BBC Radio 4 comedy, Ed Reardon's Week as Olive, a student in Ed's writing class. Other work for BBC Radio 4 includes the role of Carolyn Knapp-Shappey in the successful airline sitcom Cabin Pressure.

Stage career and honours

Cole has also performed as a stage actress for almost forty years. On the West End stage she has featured in Noises Off in 1983 (Savoy Theatre), Steel Magnolias in 1989 (Lyric Theatre) and Quartet in 1999 (Albery Theatre). Her most prominent stage role was as Betty in the hit comedy A Passionate Woman written by Kay Mellor. The play, directed by Ned Sherrin, opened at the Comedy Theatre in 1994 and had a nine month extended run. On the West End's production's last curtain call, Cole was made the subject of This Is Your Life.

In 1998, Cole's career in comedy was commemorated in the BBC documentary series Funny Women. In the same year, Cole's autobiography A Passionate Life was published. The book's foreword was written by British theatre director Ned Sherrin.

Cole was awarded an honorary Masters of Arts degree from the University of Bristol in 2002. In 2005, she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to drama, the elderly and mental health charities.

Cole was voted Solihull's favourite Silhillian in a competition run by Solihull Council in December 2006. She beat Lucy Davis, Martin Johnson and Richard Hammond to pick up the top crown in The S Factor.

Personal life

Cole married fight director Henry Marshall in 1973. Marshall was one of the founders of the British Academy of Dramatic Combat and was a Master at Arms at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. They have a daughter Emma who was born in 1973. They divorced after thirteen years of marriage in 1986.

In 1998 Cole married fellow actor Peter Birrel after meeting him again by chance, thirty years after they first appeared together in a production of Richard II at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. She remained his wife until his death from cancer in 2004.

Cole is a patron of Age Concern and Rethink, the largest severe mental illness charity in the UK.

Television roles

Year	Title	Role	Notes	Reference
1978	Lillie	Agnes Langtry	Episode title: America!
1981 to 1985	Tenko	Dr. Beatrice Mason
1982 to 1985	Open All Hours	Mrs. Delphine Featherstone
1988	Talking Heads	Muriel	Episode title: Soldiering On
1989	A Bit of a Do	Betty Sillitoe
1990 to 1994	Waiting for God	Diana Trent
1997 to 1998	Keeping Mum	Mrs. Bear
2001	Life As We Know It	Lizzie Cameron
2004 to 2009	Doc Martin	Joan Norton
2011 -	Coronation Street	Sylvia Goodwin	Roy Cropper's mother

External links

• Stephanie Cole at the Internet Movie Database
• Stephanie Cole archive at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection, University of Bristol