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Helen Fraser (actress)
English actress (born 1942) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Helen Fraser (born Helen Margaret Stronach; born 15 June 1942) is a retired English actress, who has appeared in many television series since the early 1960s.[1] For international audiences, she may be best known for her roles in Billy Liar (1963) and Repulsion (1965).[2] She is also well known in Britain for portraying the role of miserable warder Sylvia Hollamby in the prison drama series Bad Girls.[3] She appeared in the series from the first episode in 1999 until the last in 2006.[1]
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Career
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She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art alongside Tom Courtenay and John Thaw, among others.[4] She gained her breakthrough role alongside Courtenay in Billy Liar (1963).[5] They later played the parents of character Dave Best in the Christmas special of The Royle Family (2008).[6]
She is best known to television viewers for her long-running role in the ITV women's prison drama Bad Girls as unpleasant prison officer Sylvia Hollamby[7] from the first episode in 1999 to the last in 2006.[1] She reprised the role in the West End production of Bad Girls: The Musical in 2007.[6]
She made her TV debut in the early 1960s and her credits include Z-Cars, Dixon of Dock Green, The Likely Lads, Doctor in Charge, The Dustbinmen, On the Buses, Rising Damp, Tales of the Unexpected, Duty Free, One Foot in the Grave and Casualty.[8] She also worked on TV with comedians like Dick Emery and the Two Ronnies in the 1970s.[6]
She has also appeared on stage, including with the Royal National Theatre, in the West End and in regional theatres across the country.[9] In 2009 and 2010, she toured the UK as Mrs Fisher in a stage version of Billy Liar.[3] In 2011, she joined the tour of Calendar Girls.[10]
Fraser has appeared in the ITV soap Coronation Street twice – in 1998 as Magenta Savannah and again in 2013 as Doris Babbage.[11][12][13]
In 2015, she appeared in an episode of the BBC daytime soap Doctors.[14]
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Personal life
In 1964, she married the recording engineer Peter Handford; the couple had met on the set of Billy Liar.[3] Handford died in 2007.[15] Fraser lives in Eye, Suffolk.[16]
Filmography
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