Prunella Scales

Prunella Scales (2010)

Prunella Scales CBE (* 22. June 1932 in Sutton Abinger , Surrey , as Prunella Margaret Rumney Illingworth ) is a British actress . She is best known for her role as Sybil Fawlty on the BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers .

Life

Scales was born in Sutton Abinger in 1932. Her father worked for a cotton company and her mother was an actress. Scales has appeared in around eighty films and television series , often in comic roles. She had her first television appearance in 1952 in an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice as Lydia Bennet. In 1954, she starred in one of her first feature films, Mr.I'm the Daughter of Charles Laughton , directed by David Lean . She also made an appearance on Coronation Street , the UK's most successful television series .

Her breakthrough as an actress came in the early 1960s in the sitcom Marriage Lines with Richard Briers as a partner. Bigger roles on BBC Radio 4 and Channel 4 followed. In 1975 she was cast as Sybil Fawlty in the television series Fawlty Towers , where she played the wife of hotel owner Basil Fawlty ( John Cleese ). Her later roles include an appearance in Howards End Again by director James Ivory .

She is married to actor Timothy West . The older of their two sons is the actor and director Samuel West . She is an ambassador for SOS Children's Charity and an active supporter of the Labor Party . In 2005, her authorized biography Prunella , written by Teresa Ransom, appeared.

theatre

Scales trained as a stage actress at the Old Vic Theater in London and the Herbert Berghof Studio in New York City . In 2004, she toured her one-woman show, An Evening with Queen Victoria .

In 2001 she received the Patricia Rothermere Award for her numerous theater roles.