| Biography | Dame Penelope Anne Constance Keith, DBE, DL (née Hatfield, married name Timson, born 2 April 1940) is an English actress, best known for her roles in the British sitcoms The Good Life and To the Manor Born.
She began her career in repertory theatre before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1963 and was a mainstay in the success of the Chichester Festival Theatre. Her theatre credits include Michael Frayn's The Norman Conquests in 1974 and Alan Ayckbourn's Donkey's Years in 1975, for which she won the Olivier Award for Best Comedy Performance.
Having started her television career in the 1960s, she became a household name in the UK in the 1970s, when she played Margot Leadbetter in the sitcom The Good Life (1975-1978), winning the BAFTA TV Award for Best Light Entertainment Performance in 1977. In 1978, she won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the television adaptation of the The Norman Conquests. She then starred as Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton in the BBC series, To the Manor Born (1979-1981), a show that received audiences of more than 20 million. In the 1980s and 1990s, she appeared as the lead character in six other comedy series.
Since the late 1990s, she has worked mainly in the theatre, including Keith Waterstone's Good Grief (1998), Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit (2004), Richard Everett's Entertaining Angels (2006) and as Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (2007).
She succeeded Lord Olivier as president of the Actors' Benevolent Fund after his death in 1989. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1990, Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2007, and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to the arts and to charity. |