Elisabeth Sladen

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Elisabeth Sladen (2003)

Elisabeth Clara Heath Sladen (born February 1, 1946 in Liverpool , † April 19, 2011 in London) was a British actress . Her best-known role was that of Sarah Jane Smith in the British science fiction series Doctor Who . She played the character regularly from 1973 to 1976 alongside Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, and took the role over and over again over the next few decades, in Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures . Sladen played one of the most famous and popular companions of the doctor.

Life

As a young child, Sladen took ballet lessons and appeared in a Royal Ballet production . She later turned to acting and attended drama school for two years after school. She then worked at the Liverpool Playhouse as an assistant manager. She had her first appearance as " corpse ". Sladen was too good as a manager and got few roles, so she consciously made some mistakes, after which she was able to appear on stage more often. Sladen and Miller married and moved to Manchester for three years , where she appeared in various roles, including Desdemona in Othello . She also got her first small film roles. In 1972 Miller and Sladen moved from Manchester to London for work, where she also got various television roles, including in Z-Cars .

In 1973, Sladen was recommended by Z-Cars producer Ron Craddock for the role that became available as a companion for Doctor Who . Sladen met producers Bary Letts and Jon Pertwee , who both wanted them right away, and she got the role of investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith . She stayed with Doctor Who for three and a half seasons alongside Pertwee as the third Doctor and Tom Baker as the fourth until 1976. Sladen has played Sarah Jane Smith many times after that. In 1981 she appeared in the pilot of the planned spin-off series K-9 and Company . In 1983 she starred in The Five Doctors . In 1993 she played Sarah Jane in Dimensions in Time and in 1995 in the fan film Downtime alongside Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield . Sladen also played Sarah Jane in various radio plays. In 2005 Sladen appeared again as Sarah Jane together with the robot dog K-9 in the regular Doctor Who episode School Reunion alongside David Tennant as the tenth Doctor. She then got her own spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures , produced by BBC ( Wales ) for CBBC , which aired four seasons. The six already filmed episodes of the fifth season were broadcast as a tribute to Sladen at a later date and ended with a review of Sarah Jane's life and the closing words "And the story goes on ... forever" (Eng. And the story lives on ... forever ).

Sladen appeared again in 2008 and 2010 in episodes of the Doctor Who series , namely in The Stolen Earth , Journey's End and End of Time, Part 2 .

In 1968 she married fellow actor Brian Miller and they have a daughter, Sadie Miller. She is also an actress and has worked on various Doctor Who radio plays.

Sladen died of 19 April 2011 of cancer .

Web links

Commons : Elisabeth Sladen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Elisabeth Sladen: Actress who came to fame as Dr Who's assistant and later had her own spin-off series. In: The Independent. April 21, 2011, accessed April 22, 2011 .
  2. Billie Piper's Rose Tyler voted the best Doctor Who companion. (No longer available online.) In: Radio Times. November 16, 2010, formerly in the original ; accessed on May 5, 2011 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / beta.radiotimes.com  
  3. Barry Letts, commentary to DVD 'The Time Warrior'
  4. The BBC confirmed today that following the death of Elisabeth Sladen there are no plans to film further episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures. Retrieved May 4, 2011
  5. ^ Doctor Who actress Elisabeth Sladen dies. In: BBC News. April 19, 2011, accessed April 20, 2011 .