The cooker and actress above, actress Jean Marsh, has died at age 90, her agent confirmed.
The British screen and the stage star won an Emmy in 1975 for its interpretation of the bite maid but finally with a good heart Rose Buck in the television drama about the class in Eduardian England.
Marsh also had papers in Hollywood films, including Cleopatra, Willow and Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy and on television in Doctor Who.
In a statement, Marsh’s friend, film director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, paid tribute to her as “wise and fun … very beautiful and friendly, and talented as an actress and writer”, and added that she died “peacefully in the careful bed for one of her very loving affectionate.”
Marsh came up with the idea of a period drama that involved the servants of a rich family while satting in France with her friend Dame Eileen Atkins, then the New York Times.
Then he created the series, which told the history of the Bellamy family and its service staff that lived under them, along with John Hawkesworth and John Whitney.
The ITV series of the 1970s was a critical and popular success and also found an amateur audience in the United States, where I was in PBS.
It is said that the top stairs have inspired in part the Downton Abbey series and was then reinvented by the BBC in 2010. Marsh became the only original cast member to return, portraying the same role in five episodes.
When the Daily Telegraph asked him in 2010 why the spectators seemed to be so interested in the master and serpantes dramas, Marsh said: “It still seems to love him because if he left his class, he knew he had done well.”
He was later forced to reduce his action commitments after a stroke.
Other notable TV credits last their long career included roles in the Twilight and Grantchester area. Stage loans include works by Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw.
Marsh, who was married for five years with Dr. Who, actor Jon Pertwee, also co-created the BBC costume drama The House of Elliott in 1991.
In 2012, he became an officer of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to drama.
In his statement, Lindsay-Hogg described almost daily telephone conversations with Marsh in the last 40 years. She was, said an “instinctively empathic person who was loved by all who with her.”
