My friend Janet Dale, who has died aged 79 of a brain tumour, was an incredibly versatile actor, her roles in 50 years of theatre and TV ranging from Shakespeare to Coronation Street, Chekhov to Casualty.
In the 1970s, Janet starred in many of Alan Ayckbourn’s plays at the Library theatre in Scarborough. In 1982, she was in the cast of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s award-winning production of Nicholas Nickleby, a smash hit in both London and Broadway. She was nominated for the actress of the year in a new play Olivier award (1981), for her performance in Peter Whelan’s The Accrington Pals, and for the Olivier award for outstanding performance of the year in a supporting role (1986), for her role in The Merry Wives of Windsor. In 1991, she starred in Alan Bennett’s play The Madness of George III as Queen Charlotte.
Janet was equally at home in her many roles in popular TV soaps and series including Coronation Street, Casualty, Holby City, Heartbeat, The Bill, Father Brown, The Buddha of Suburbia (1993) and The Mystery of Edwin Drood (2002).
Born in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, to Peggy (nee Wilcox), a further education teacher, and Alan Dale, a primary school headteacher, Janet moved to the West Country aged 11, when her father was made headteacher at a Somerset school. Her love of the theatre began with school plays, at Weston-super-Mare grammar school for girls, and continued in student productions at Bristol University, where she studied German and drama. She later joined the Northcott theatre in Exeter.
Janet cared deeply about injustice and spent two years of her life, after leaving university, as a volunteer with the United Nations Association, working in Rio shantytowns and among destitute communities in Salvador, in north-east Brazil, which is where I first met her.
She retained a lifelong interest in Brazil. When the Catholic leader Hélder Câmara, branded “the red archbishop” by the military dictatorship for declaring that poverty is violence, came to speak at the Roundhouse in Camden in 1969, she drove him in her rackety car across London to a church in Kew for a hastily arranged baptism of my baby, who became her godson, Camilo.
An enthusiastic animal lover, after moving to the Cotswold village of Blockley she became a volunteer with the Cats Protection League. Always extremely modest about her acting career, she was also funny and generous.
Janet is survived by her sister, Susan.
