LONDON – Actress Sylvia Syms, who starred in classic British films such as ‘Ice Cold in Alex’ and ‘Victim’, has died, her family announced on Friday. She was 89.
Syms’ children said she “died peacefully” on Friday at Denville Hall, a London retirement home for actors and entertainers.
“She lived an amazing life and brought us joy and laughter to the end,” children Beatie and Ben Edney said in a statement. “Just yesterday we reviewed all our adventures together. She will be missed so much.”
Born in London in 1934, Syms has become a staple of British cinema. He acted in many of the best-known British films of the 1950s and 60s.
She starred opposite John Mills in the 1958 World War II adventure Ice Cold in Alex and the next year appeared in the rock musical Expresso Bongo with Laurence Harvey and Cliff Richard. In the 1961 thriller Victim, the first British film to openly deal with homosexuality, she played the wife of Dirk Bogarde’s mysterious gay lawyer.
Other notable films in a career that spanned seven decades included the 1974 Cold War drama The Tamarind Seed, starring Julie Andrews and Omar Sharif.
Syms played British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1991 TV movie Thatcher: The Final Days and appeared as Queen Mother Elizabeth – mother of Helen Mirren’s Queen Elizabeth II – in Stephen Frears’ Oscar-winning 2006 film The Queen.
The following year she was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire by the real Queen at Buckingham Palace.
Syms had a recurring role on the BBC soap opera EastEnders between 2007 and 2010 and continued to appear in film and television well into her 80s.
Syms married Alan Edney in 1956; The couple divorced in 1989. She is survived by her daughter and son.
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