Felicity Kendal

Felicity Kendal CBE
Kendal in 2016
Born	(1946-09-25) 25 September 1946 (age 77) Olton, Warwickshire, England
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1947–present
Spouses	Drewe Henley ​ ​ (m. 1968; div. 1979)​ Michael Rudman ​ ​ (m. 1983; div. 1990)​
Partner(s)	Tom Stoppard (1991–1998) Michael Rudman (1998; died. 2023)[1]
Children	2, including Charley Henley
Parents	Geoffrey Kendal (father) Laura Liddell (mother)
Relatives	Jennifer Kendal (sister)

Felicity Ann Kendal CBE (born 25 September 1946) is an English actress, working principally in television and theatre. She has appeared in numerous stage and screen roles over a more than 70-year career, but the role that brought attention to her career was that of Barbara Good in the 1975 television series The Good Life.

Early life

Felicity Kendal was born in Olton, England, in 1946.^[2] She is the younger daughter of Laura Liddell and Geoffrey Kendal, an actor and manager.^[2][3] Her older sister, Jennifer Kendal, was also an actress.

After early years in Birmingham, Kendal lived in India with her family at the age of seven: her father was an English actor-manager who led his own repertory company on tours of India.^[3] The ensemble would perform Shakespeare before royalty one day and in rough rural villages the next, where audiences included many schoolchildren.^[4][5] As the family travelled, Kendal attended six different Loreto College convent schools in India,^[6] until the age of 13.^[7] She contracted typhoid fever in Calcutta at the age of 17.^[8]

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph journalist Jasper Rees in 2006, Kendal said that her time in India was "sometimes very hard, sometimes very poor, sometimes ghastly, ghastly, ghastly in all sorts of ways", she did not regret it, and that it was an "amazing way of living".^[7] She also felt that it prepared her for a career in threatre as she did nit have any established expectations about how things should be.^[7]

The Good Life and other television work

In 1975, Kendal appeared as Princess Vicky in Edward the Seventh.^[9] Also in 1975, Kendal had her big break on television with the BBC sitcom The Good Life. She and Richard Briers starred as Barbara and Tom Good; a middle-class suburban couple who decide to quit the rat race and become self-sufficient, much to the consternation of their snooty but well-meaning neighbour Margo (Penelope Keith) and her down-to-earth husband Jerry Leadbetter (Paul Eddington).^[10][11] Kendal appeared in all 30 episodes, which extended over four series and two specials from 1975 to 1978.^[12][11]

BBC Head of Comedy Jimmy Gilbert, who had commissioned The Good Life as a showcase for Briers,^[13] saw Kendal and Keith perform in The Norman Conquests and felt they would suit the roles of Barbara and Margo.^[10]

Stage work

Kendal made her stage debut aged nine months, when she was carried on stage as a changeling boy in A Midsummer Night's Dream.^[2]

She made her London stage debut in Minor Murder (1967).^[14] In 1979 she was directed by Peter Hall for the first time, as Constanze Mozart in Amadeus.^[7] A recording with the original cast was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 1983.^[15] Her stage career blossomed during the 1980s and 1990s when she formed a close professional association with Tom Stoppard,^[7] starring in the first productions of many of his plays, including The Real Thing (1982), Hapgood (1988), Arcadia (1993) and Indian Ink (1995). This last was originally a radio play and the role was written for her.

She won the Evening Standard Theatre Award in 1989 for her performances in Much Ado About Nothing and Ivanov.

In 2002, Kendal starred in Charlotte Jones's play Humble Boy when it transferred from the National Theatre to the West End. In 2006 she starred in the West End revival of Amy's View by David Hare, which was her tenth collaboration with director Peter Hall.<rf name="REESM"/>

In 2008 she appeared in the West End in a revival of Noël Coward's play The Vortex. In 2009, she appeared in the play The Last Cigarette (by Simon Gray) and in 2010 in Mrs. Warren's Profession (by George Bernard Shaw). Both played at the Chichester Festival Theatre and subsequently in the West End.

In 2013, she starred in the first London revival of Relatively Speaking by Alan Ayckbourn at Wyndham's Theatre.^[16] Later that year, she toured the UK with Simon Callow in Chin-Chin, an English translation by Willis Hall of Francois Billetdoux's Tchin-Tchin.^[17] In 2014, she toured the UK^[18] and Australia as Judith Bliss in Noël Coward's Hay Fever, which then played in the West End in 2015.^[19]

In 2017, she starred with Maureen Lipman in a revival of Lettice and Lovage at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

In 2021, Kendal starred as Evangeline Harcourt in the London revival of Anything Goes at the Barbican Theatre.^[20]

In 2023, Kendal starred as Dotty Otley in the London revival of Noises Off at the Phoenix Theatre and the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

Other work

In 1995, Kendal was one of the readers of Edward Lear poems on a specially made spoken-word audio CD bringing together a collection of Lear's nonsense songs.^[21]

Personal life

Kendal's first marriage to Drewe Henley (1968–1979) and her second to Michael Rudman (1983–94) ended in divorce. Kendal has two sons: Charley from her marriage to Henley and Jacob from her marriage to Rudman. In 1991, she left Rudman but they reunited in 1998.^[1]

Kendal was brought up in the Catholic faith. She converted to Judaism at the time of her second marriage, but has stated about the conversion, "I felt I was returning to my roots."^[22] Her conversion took more than three years; she has stated that her decision to convert had "nothing to do" with her husband.^[23] Kendal's memoirs, titled White Cargo, were published in 1998.^[4]

When asked by The Guardian in 2010 whom she would invite to her "dream dinner party", Kendal replied "Emmeline Pankhurst, Gandhi, Byron, Eddie Izzard, George Bernard Shaw, Golda Meir and Marlene Dietrich."^[8]

In 1981 Kendal was named Rear of the Year.^[7] The award was created by publicist Anthony Edwards to promote specific brands of jeans by attracting media attention.^[24]

Kendal was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1995 New Year Honours for services to drama.^[2][25] She is an ambassador for the charity Royal Voluntary Service, previously known as WRVS.^[26]

Selected filmography

Television work

As herself:

• Strictly Come Dancing (series 8) (2010)^[2] – partnered with Vincent Simone. The couple were eliminated in the eighth week (staged in Blackpool).
• Felicity Kendal's Indian Shakespeare Quest (2012)
• Piers Morgan's Life Stories (2012)

Film work

Kendal's film roles are:

• Shakespeare Wallah (1965) – as Lizzie Buckingham. The film (by Merchant Ivory) was loosely based on the Kendal family's real-life experiences in post-colonial India.^[3]
• Valentino (1977) – as June Mathis
• We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993) – voiced Elsa
• Parting Shots (1999) – as Jill Saunders
• How Proust Can Change Your Life (2000) – as narrator

Awards

Wins

• 1974 – Most Promising Newcomer – Variety Club^[27]
• 1979 – Best Actress – Variety Club^[27]
• 1980 – Clarence Derwent Award^[27]
• 1981 – Best supporting Female (UK) – Clarence Derwent Award^[28]
• 1984 – Woman of the Year – Variety Club^[27]
• 1984 – Best Actress – Variety Club^[27]
• 1989 – Best Performance by an Actress – Evening Standard Theatre Awards^[29]

References

Sources

• Kendal, Felicity (1998). White Cargo. University of Michigan, US: Michael Joseph. ISBN 0718143116.
• Webber, Richard (2001). A celebration of The Good Life. Oxford: Isis. ISBN 9780753154977.

External links

• Felicity Kendal at the British Film Institute
• Felicity Kendal at IMDb
• Felicity Kendal at British Comedy Guide

This page was last edited on 14 April 2024, at 16:48