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Phyllida Law, whose prolific acting career encompassed a wide range of stage, TV and film roles – a number of which were alongside her daughters, Emma and Sophie Thompson – has died aged 94. Her personal manager, Jacky Leggo, said in a statement that she “died supremely peacefully at home, surrounded by all her family”.
Born in Glasgow in 1932, Law was accepted at the prestigious Bristol Old Vic Theatre school – initially intending to be a stage designer but then switching to acting. She appeared in a number of Bristol Old Vic productions in the 1950s, and it was there she met Eric Thompson, a fellow actor, whom she married in 1957.
Law broke into TV in the late 50s, with numerous appearances on screen throughout the 60s in shows such as Dr Finlay’s Casebook, Dixon of Dock Green and The Troubleshooters. By the end of the 1970s she had appeared in significant stage roles, including replacing Carole Boyer in the original 1967 production of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg after it transferred to the Comedy theatre in London from the Citizens in Glasgow, and appearing alongside Alec Guinness in the first run of John Mortimer’s A Voyage Round My Father at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in 1971, and Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus at the Oxford Playhouse in 1973. She also joined the National Theatre, appearing in 1979 in Somerset Maugham’s For Services Rendered and JB Priestley’s When We Are Married, and was cast in the first London run of the English-language musical version of La Cage aux Folles.
From the late 80s she achieved more prominence in film, appearing alongside daughter Emma in Peter’s Friends (directed by Thompson’s then husband Kenneth Branagh), Much Ado About Nothing (again with Thompson and Branagh), and the Gwyneth Paltrow-led adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma alongside her other daughter Sophie. Law then appeared with Emma – playing mother and daughter – in The Winter Guest, Alan Rickman’s feature film directing debut, which won considerable acclaim.
Law continued to appear in high-prestige TV shows, including Waking the Dead, Rosemary & Thyme, Foyle’s War, Doc Martin and Agatha Christie’s Poirot, and had a recurring role in the Stephen Fry lawyer comedy drama Kingdom as Fry’s Aunt Auriel. Her final screen role was in the 2020 romance Then Came You, written by and starring Kathie Lee Gifford.
Law was married to Thompson until his death in 1982, and is survived by their children, Emma and Sophie.
