Penelope Wilton
Birthday: Born in 1946-06-03 in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England, UK
Deathday: Alive
Penelope Wilton (b. 1946) is a common name in British Theatre for which she has been nominated for the Laurence Oliver Award several times. Furthermore, she is a known name for all her work in British Television as well, most recently as a consistent part of 'Downton Abbey' on ITV.
TV Credits
Ever Decreasing Circles
Character:
Martin Bryce lives in a quiet suburban close with his wife Anne. He does his best to "organise" the leisure time of all of the other inhabitants of the close, running umpteen societies and doing "good works". He's is quite happy with his lot until Paul Ryman moves in next door....
Comedy Connections
Character:
Comedy Connections was a BBC One documentary series produced by BBC Scotland that aired from 2003 to 2008. The show looked at the stories behind the production of some of Britain's comedy television programmes, showing how they tied in with the production of other comedy shows. The show featured interviews with some of the cast and crew of the subject programme, as well as footage from the series. Comedy Connections mostly documented BBC comedies and sitcoms, although two programmes have been f...
C.A.T.S. Eyes
Character:
C.A.T.S. Eyes is a British television series made by TVS for ITV between 1985 and 1987....
Five Days
Character: Barbara Poole
Thriller series which tracks five 24-hour periods in a police investigation....
Bob & Rose
Character: Monica Gossage
Bob Gossage is a thirtysomething teacher who has been gay all his life. Now, however, he quite unexpectedly finds himself falling in love with a woman, Rose Cooper. Various confusions and misunderstandings ensue, with Rose's heartbroken ex-boyfriend Andy, Bob's jealous colleague Holly, and his gay-rights campaigning mother Monica all getting caught up in the mix....
The Passion
Character: Mary
The Passion is a television drama serial that tells the story of the last week in the life of Jesus....
The BBC Television Shakespeare
Character:
The BBC Television Shakespeare is a series of British television adaptations of the plays of William Shakespeare, created by Cedric Messina and produced by BBC Television. It was transmitted in the UK from 3 December 1978 to 27 April 1985 and spanned seven series. Development of the series began in 1975 when Messina saw that Glamis Castle would make a perfect location for an adaptation of Shakespeare's play As You Like It. On returning to London, he envisioned an entire series devoted exclusivel...
Screaming
Character:
An 8 episode BBC One sitcom from 1992. Written by Carla Lane, it follows three middle-aged women, former school-friends and now sharing a home together, who've all unknowingly slept with the same man Stars Gwen Taylor, Penelope Wilton, Jill Baker and Anthony Barclay....
Downton Abbey
Character: Isobel Merton
A chronicle of the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants in the post-Edwardian era—with great events in history having an effect on their lives and on the British social hierarchy. ...
Doctor Who
Character:
The Doctor is a Time Lord: a 900 year old alien with 2 hearts, part of a gifted civilization who mastered time travel. The Doctor saves planets for a living—more of a hobby actually, and the Doctor's very, very good at it....
The Borrowers
Character: Homily
The Borrowers are small, 15cm high humans who live in the English hinterland. They live out their lives in mouse-hole sized nooks in human homes, and survive by 'borrowing' all they need from the house and its inhabitants. This series follows young girl Arriety, and her parents Pod and Homily, as they are displaced from their home and try to find a new home, with the help of a human boy, George....
Doctor Who
Character: Harriet Jones
The Doctor is a Time Lord: a 900 year old alien with 2 hearts, part of a gifted civilization who mastered time travel. The Doctor saves planets for a living—more of a hobby actually, and the Doctor's very, very good at it....
Performance
Character: Beth
An anthology series of various plays and dramatic performances....
South Riding
Character: Mrs Beddows
The lives and loves of a 1930s Yorkshire town explored in a passionate tale of politics in small places. South Riding charts the story of Sarah Burton's homecoming to Yorkshire in 1934 after twenty years teaching in London and the Empire. After a fiery interview with a conservative interview panel, outspoken Sarah takes up her first headmistress-ship at Kiplington High School for Girls, determined to demonstrate to her new pupils that the future is theirs for the taking....
Talking Heads
Character: Rosemary
A series of dramatic monologues written for BBC television by the acclaimed British playwright Alan Bennett....
Brief Encounters
Character: Pauline
In the early 1980s the lives of four ordinary women, their husbands, mothers, families and community are turned around when they become Ann Summers party plan saleswomen....
Murder Is Easy
Character: Miss Pinkerton
England, 1954. On a train to London, Fitzwilliam meets Miss Pinkerton, who tells him that a killer is on the loose in the sleepy English village of Wychwood under Ashe. The villagers believe the deaths are accidents, but Miss Pinkerton knows otherwise — and when she’s later found dead on her way to Scotland Yard, Fitzwilliam feels he must find the killer before they can strike again....
An Audience with...
Character: Self
An Audience with... is a British entertainment television show produced by London Weekend Television, in which a host, usually a singer or comedian, performs for an invited audience of celebrity guests, interspersed with questions from the audience, in a light hearted revue/tribute style....
Kavanagh Q.C.
Character: Barbara Watkins
James Kavanagh QC is one of the top flight barristers in Britain. Each episode has him handling challenging cases and defendants which put his skills to the test regularly....
The Norman Conquests
Character: Annie
The trilogy presents a comically fraught weekend from three different perspectives, as family and in laws gather at the decaying country home of their bedridden mother; the drink flows, and hidden enmities, intimate secrets and uncomfortable truths emerge through the veneer of jollity and civility....
Arena
Character: Self - Narrator
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from sin...
Wives and Daughters
Character: Mrs. Hamley
Wives and Daughters is a 1999 four part BBC serial adapted from the novel Wives and Daughters: An Everyday Story by Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell. It focuses on Molly Gibson (Justine Waddell), the daughter of the town doctor, and the changes that occur in her life after her widowed father chooses to remarry. The union brings into her once-quiet life an ever-proper stepmother (Francesca Annis) and flirtatious stepsister, Cynthia (Keeley Hawes), while a friendship with the local squire brings...
Dead Hot
Character: Francine
5 years ago, Elliot came home to find his soulmate Peter had vanished—with nothing left behind but his finger in a puddle of blood. Still living with Peter's twin Jess, they don't know if he ran away, was kidnapped or worse. Elliot tries moving on, and after a magical date with wonderful Will, that seems possible. But when shit hits the fan, Elliot and Jess know they need to find out the truth....
After Life
Character: Anne
Tony had a perfect life. But after his wife Lisa suddenly dies, Tony changes. After contemplating taking his own life, he decides instead to live long enough to punish the world by saying and doing whatever he likes from now on....
Play for Today
Character: Virginia Carlion
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration....
The Tale of Beatrix Potter
Character: Beatrix Potter
...
Movie Credits
Shaun of the Dead
Character: Barbara
Shaun lives a supremely uneventful life, which revolves around his girlfriend, his mother, and, above all, his local pub. This gentle routine is threatened when the dead return to life and make strenuous attempts to snack on ordinary Londoners....
Clockwise
Character: Pat Garden
School headmaster Brian Stimpson is obsessed with timeliness, order, and discipline. Brian misses his train after meticulously preparing a speech for an education conference. With no one else to turn to, he asks young former student Laura Wisely for a ride. Laura, upset over a break-up, agrees to drive him in her parents' car - which alarms her mother and father, who worry that she has run away with a married man and subsequently alert the police....
Iris
Character: Janet Stone
True story of the lifelong romance between novelist Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley, from their student days through her battle with Alzheimer's disease....
The History Boys
Character: Mrs. Bibby
The story of an unruly class of bright, funny history students at a Yorkshire grammar school in pursuit of an undergraduate place at Oxford or Cambridge. Bounced between their maverick English master, a young and shrewd teacher hired to up their test scores, a grossly out-numbered history teacher, and a headmaster obsessed with results, the boys attempt to pass....
Calendar Girls
Character: Ruth
Members of a Yorkshire branch of the Women's Institute cause controversy when they pose nude for a charity calendar....
The French Lieutenant's Woman
Character: Sonia
In this story-within-a-story, Anna is an actress starring opposite Mike in a period piece about the forbidden love between their respective characters, Sarah and Charles. Both actors are involved in serious relationships, but the passionate nature of the script leads to an off-camera love affair as well. While attempting to maintain their composure and professionalism, Anna and Mike struggle to come to terms with their infidelity....
Cry Freedom
Character: Wendy Woods
A dramatic story, based on actual events, about the friendship between two men struggling against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. Donald Woods is a white liberal journalist in South Africa who begins to follow the activities of Stephen Biko, a courageous and outspoken black anti-apartheid activist....
Blame It on the Bellboy
Character: Patricia Fulford
Mike Lawton, Maurice Horton, and Melvin Orton are three men who come to Venice. One of them is a hit man sent to take out a mobster. Another is a lech looking for a little action with a woman he never met, whom he was set up with. And one of them was sent by his employer to inspect a property his boss wants to buy. All three men stay at the same hotel. But when the bellboy gets their names mixed up and gives info meant for someone else. So one of them meets a Realtor who will whatever she has to...
Joseph Andrews
Character: Mrs. Wilton
Lady Booby alias 'Belle', the lively wife of the fat landed squire Sir Thomas Booby, has a lusty eye on the attractive, intelligent villager Joseph Andrews, a Latin pupil and protégé of parson Adams, and makes him their footman. Joseph's heart belongs to a country girl, foundling Fanny Goodwill, but his masters take him on a fashionable trip to Bath, where the spoiled society comes mainly to see and be seen, but drowns in the famous Roman baths. When the all but grieving lady finds Joseph's Chri...
Alice Through the Looking Glass
Character: White Queen
A modern adaptation of the classic children's story 'Alice through the Looking Glass', which continued on from the popular 'Alice in Wonderland' story. This time Alice is played by the mother, who falls asleep while reading the the bedtime story to her daughter. Walking through the Looking Glass, Alice finds herself in Chessland, a magical and fun world. There she meets the Red and White Queens, as well as many other amusing friends on her journey across the chessboard countryside onto become a ...
Carrington
Character: Lady Ottoline Morrell
Painter Dora Carrington develops an intimate but extremely complex bond with writer Lytton Strachey. Though Lytton is a homosexual, he is enchanted by the mysterious Dora and they begin a lifelong friendship that has strangely romantic undertones. Eventually, Lytton and Dora decide to live together, despite the fact that the latter has fallen in love with military man Ralph Partridge, whom she plans to marry....
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Character: Jean Ainslie
British retirees travel to India to take up residence in what they believe is a newly restored hotel. Less luxurious than its advertisements, the Marigold Hotel nevertheless slowly begins to charm in unexpected ways as the residents find new purpose in their old age....
Laughterhouse
Character: Alice Singleton
A farmer becomes an unintentional celebrity when, because of a strike, he has to walk his 5000 geese 100 miles to market....
Tom's Midnight Garden
Character: Aunt Melbourne
When Tom's brother Peter gets measles, he is sent to stay with his Uncle Alan and Aunt Gwen in a flat with no garden and an elderly landlady, Mrs Bartholomew, living upstairs. Because he may be infectious, he is not allowed to play outside and feels lonely. Without exercise he is less sleepy at night and when he hears the communal grandfather clock strangely strike 13, he investigates and finds the small back yard is now a large sunlit garden....
Rockaby
Character: Old Woman
An old woman in a rocking chair listens to a disembodied voice (her own) that recounts her life and that of her mother's. When the voice stops, she calls for more....
Brexit Shorts: The End
Character: Helen
After 43 years together, Helen finds out her husband is leaving....
The Girl
Character: Peggy Robertson
Director Alfred Hitchcock is revered as one of the greatest creative minds in the history of cinema. Known for his psychological thrillers, Hitchcock’s leading ladies were cool, beautiful and preferably blonde. One such actress was Tippi Hedren, an unknown fashion model given her big break when Hitchcock’s wife saw her on a TV commercial. Brought to Universal Studios, Hedren was shocked when the director, at the peak of his career, quickly cast her to star in his next feature, 1963’s The Birds. ...
Belle
Character: Lady Mary Murray
Dido Elizabeth Bell, the illegitimate, mixed-race daughter of a Royal Navy admiral, plays an important role in the campaign to abolish slavery in England....
Victoria & Albert
Character: Princess Mary Louise Victoria
The passionate love story that was Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's lengthy marriage. Beginning in 1837, the year of King William IV's death and 18-year-old Victoria's ascension to the throne, the series charts the tumultuous period in 19th Century England where Victoria comes to terms with the enormous duties that lay ahead of her, while also falling deeply in love with her beloved Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The marriage and birth of their nine children are featured, as is Albert's frustrat...
Match Point
Character: Eleanor Hewett
Chris, a former tennis player, looks for work as an instructor. He meets Tom Hewett, a wealthy young man whose sister Chloe falls in love with Chris. But Chris has his eye on Tom's fiancee Nola....
All the World's a Screen: Shakespeare on Film
Character: Narrator (voice)
An exploration into the history of Shakespeare's plays, from the silent era to the modern day featuring archive interviews with movie directors including Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Franco Zeffirelli, Kenneth Branagh and more....
The Deep Blue Sea
Character: Hester Collyer
Hester Collyer is rescued by a neighbor after attempting suicide in the flat she shares with her young lover, ex-RAF pilot Freddie Page. The neighbors alert her husband, who arrives at the flat only to find her fully recovered......
King Lear
Character: Regan
King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about hi...
Country
Character: Virginia Carlion
In 1945, the Carlions assemble at an English country house for a family gathering. During the event, they must determine who is to take over the family brewing empire, since the present head of the business, Sir Frederick, is getting old. The results of the 1945 general election causes a major stir, and some angry farmers occupy a barn....
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Character: Jean Ainslie
As the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has only a single remaining vacancy - posing a rooming predicament for two fresh arrivals - Sonny pursues his expansionist dream of opening a second hotel....
Judi Dench: Our National Treasure
Character: Self
A profile of the actress from a strict Quaker upbringing in Yorkshire, through her staunch determination to make it as a thespian. There's also a look at her work in TV favourites such as A Fine Romance and As Time Goes By, where Judi's performances won her four BAFTA awards, and her tenure in the James Bond franchise....
Talking Heads 2
Character:
A series of monologues....
Victoria Wood with All the Trimmings
Character: Mrs. Cratchit
The comedienne stars in this festive sketch show, alongside a host of celebrity guests....
Falling
Character: Daisy Langrish
Television drama based on the novel by Elizabeth Jane Howard. Author Daisy Langrish buys a tranquil country cottage as a bolt-hole from the pressures of her busy London life, but doesn't expect her new home to come complete with a would-be suitor. The day she moves in, local gardener Henry Kent is immediately on hand to help and offer his friendship, but are his intentions sinister?...
Downton Abbey 3
Character: Isobel Crawley
Plot details under wraps....
The BFG
Character: The Queen
The BFG is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is far too nice and jumbly. It's lucky for Sophie that he is. Had she been carried off in the middle of the night by the Bloodbottler, or any of the other giants—rather than the BFG—she would have soon become breakfast. When Sophie hears that the giants are flush-bunking off to England to swollomp a few nice little chiddlers, she decides she must stop them once and for all. And the BFG is going to help her!...
The Whistle-Blower
Character: Heather Graham
A bank employee, Laura Tracey, places herself and her family in mortal danger after reporting irregularities in the firm's overseas accounts to the National Criminal Intelligence Service. She learns that the money belongs to South American drug cartels, and her family are immediately taken into the Witness Protection Program and relocated....
Half Broken Things
Character: Jean
A middle aged house-sitter meets two tearaways, and together they form a surrogate family...
Margot
Character: B.Q.
At the age of forty Dame Margot Fonteyn is considered to be past her best as a prima ballerina and Ninette de Valois is reducing her roles at the Royal Ballet. Then the exciting young Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev, a recent defector to the West, comes into her life and her bed and revitalizes her career. Frederick Aashton creates a new ballet for them and they become the golden couple of the ballet world. However, Margot is married to Roberto 'Tito' Arias, a Panamanian politician of dubious repu...
National Theatre Live: 50 Years on Stage
Character: Delia
To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the National Theatre of Great Britain presents National Theatre: 50 Years on Stage, bringing together the best British actors for a unique evening of unforgettable performances, broadcast live from London to cinemas around the world....
Harold Pinter: A Celebration
Character: Self
In June 2009, a group Britain's leading actors gathered for one night only to perform a celebration of the work of Harold Pinter at the National Theatre, directed by Ian Rickson. The team who made the acclaimed Harold Pinter documentaries for BBC's Arena was there to record this unique performance....
The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society
Character: Amelia Maugery
Free-spirited writer Juliet Ashton forms a life-changing bond with the delightful and eccentric Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, when she decides to write about the book club they formed during the occupation of Guernsey in WWII....
Zoo
Character: Denise Austin
Young Tom and his misfit friends fight to save 'Buster' the baby elephant during the German air raid bombings of Belfast in 1941....
Summerland
Character: Older Alice
A woman during the Second World War opens her heart to an evacuee after initially resolving to be rid of him....
Eternal Beauty
Character: Vivian
When Jane is rejected by life, she spirals into a chaotic, schizophrenic world where love and normality collide with humorous consequences....
Downton Abbey
Character: Isobel Merton
The beloved Crawleys and their intrepid staff prepare for the most important moment of their lives. A royal visit from the King and Queen of England will unleash scandal, romance and intrigue that will leave the future of Downton hanging in the balance....
Othello
Character: Desdemona
Iago and a comrade-in-arms are outside the Venice home of Desdemona's father, who does not yet know that she has eloped with Othello. Iago confides to his friend -- who had hoped to marry Desdemona -- that he serves Othello to further his own ends. Venice needs Othello to protect its commercial interests in Cyprus where the Turkish fleet is headed. Desdemona insists on going to Cyprus, too. In Cyprus, Iago plots to convince Othello that Desdemona has betrayed him with Cassio. A lot more than pol...
King Lear
Character: Regan
King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about hi...
Operation Mincemeat
Character: Hester Leggett
In 1943, two British intelligence officers concoct Operation Mincemeat, wherein their plan to drop a corpse with false papers off the coast of Spain would fool Nazi spies into believing the Allied forces were planning to attack by way of Greece rather than Sicily....
Pride & Prejudice
Character: Mrs. Gardiner
A story of love and life among the landed English gentry during the Georgian era. Mr. Bennet is a gentleman living in Hertfordshire with his overbearing wife and five daughters, but if he dies their house will be inherited by a distant cousin whom they have never met, so the family's future happiness and security is dependent on the daughters making good marriages....
Mrs. Warren's Profession
Character: Vivie Warren
Performed in 1902, after being banned by the censor for eight years, Shaw's indictment of the hypocrisy surrounding prostitution still shocked its audiences. Mrs. Warren has graduated from prostitution to opening and operating a chain of brothels throughout Europe. When her educated daughter Vivie discovers the truth about her mother's profession her reactions affect everyone around her....
Pasmore
Character: Helen
Colin Pasmore tests his strength against his family ties but finds them stronger than he ever imagined....
The Strange Case of Delfina Potocka
Character: Delfina / Paulina
In 1945, the new Polish government asked for the heart of Chopin previously buried in Paris. A woman called Paulina Czernika approached the government claiming to have some love letters from the composer to her great-grandmother, the Countess Delfina Potocka....
Downton Abbey: A New Era
Character: Isobel Merton
The Crawley family goes on a grand journey to the south of France to uncover the mystery of the dowager countess's newly inherited villa. Meanwhile, a Hollywood director seeks to film his latest production at Downton....
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Character: Maureen Fry
Harold Fry is an unremarkable man who has made mistakes with all the important things: being a husband, a father and a friend. And now, well into his 60s, he is content to fade quietly into the background of life. Until, one day – Harold learns his old friend Queenie is dying. Harold leaves home, walking to his post office to send her a letter. And out of the blue, Harold decides to keep walking, all the way to her hospice, 450 miles away....
Able's Will
Character: Journalist
Thomas Able, once a successful writer, has not written since the war. He lies paralysed and dying. His family gather at the family home....
The Tale of Beatrix Potter
Character: Beatrix Potter
Biography based on the life of the author Beatrix Potter....