Stephanie Cole has died aged 84

Beloved actress Stephanie Cole has died aged 84.

Cole trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School from 1958 to 1960 and was a regular of the UK repertory theatre circuit, making her stage debut at age 17 playing the eccentric, elderly medium Madame Arcati in Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit – a role she reprised 46 years later at the West End’s Savoy Theatre.

Stage credits included The Mousetrap (1968), Michael Frayn’s Noises Off at the Savoy Theatre (1986), Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias at the Lyric Theatre (1989), and Ronald Harwood’s Quartet at the Albery Theatre (1999).

In 1994, she played Betty in Kay Mellor’s hit comedy A Passionate Woman at the Comedy Theatre, leading a nine-month extended West End run that earned her an Evening Standard Theatre Award nomination. She also toured as Alice in Peter Nichols’s So Long Life (2001) and as Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan’s The Rivals.

Her later stage career featured prominent roles at major UK theatrical institutions. She performed at the Chichester Festival Theatre in productions of Pygmalion (as Mrs Higgins) and Terence Rattigan’s Separate Tables. In 2016, she returned to the Bristol Old Vic to play the Fool in Tom Morris’s production of King Lear.

Cole established herself as a ubiquitous presence on British television across six decades. Credits included Tenko (1981 to 1985), the sharp-tongued Diana Trent in the BBC sitcom Waiting for God (1990 to 1994), and later portrayed Joan Norton in Doc Martin (2004 to 2009).

One of her stage-adjacent roles came with her appearances in Alan Bennett’s beloved monologue “Soldiering On” as part of his Talking Heads TV series. She later performed “A Cream Cracker Under the Settee” as part of a live version of Bennett’s monologues in Bath. On radio, she appeared in the long-running BBC Radio 4 comedy series Cabin Pressure.