Hilary Mason
Birthday: Born in 1917-09-04 in Birmingham, England, UK
Deathday: 2006-09-05
Hilary Lavender Mason (4 September 1917 – 5 September 2006) was an English character actress who appeared in a wide variety of roles, mainly on UK television. She is probably best known internationally for her performance as the blind psychic in Nicolas Roeg's film Don't Look Now. In later years Mason appeared as Gladys in the popular children's TV show Maid Marian and her Merry Men.
TV Credits
Aquila
Character:
Aquila is a British children's television show which aired on the BBC from 1997 to 1998. An episode was aired once a week, and was based on the story of two boys, Tom Baxter and Geoff Reynolds, who find a spacecraft when digging in a field. It was based on the book Aquila by British author Andrew Norriss and set in Bristol....
Wycliffe
Character: Edith Riddle
Wycliffe is a British television series, based on W. J. Burley's novels about Detective Superintendent Charles Wycliffe. It was produced by HTV and broadcast on the ITV Network, following a pilot episode on 7 August 1993, between 24 July 1994 and 5 July 1998. The series was filmed in Cornwall, with a production office in Truro. Music for the series was composed by Nigel Hess and was awarded the Royal Television Society award for the best television theme. Wycliffe is played by Jack Shepherd, ass...
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
Character:
Disillusioned after a long career at Sunshine Desserts, Perrin goes through a mid-life crisis and fakes his own death. Returning in disguise after various attempts at finding a 'new life', he gets his old job back and finds nothing has changed. He is eventually found out, and in the second series has success with a chain of shops selling useless junk. That becomes so successful that he feels he has created a monster and decides to destroy it. In the third and final series he has a dream of formi...
Bergerac
Character: Aunt Annie
Bergerac is a British television show set on Jersey. Produced by the BBC in association with the Seven Network, and first screened on BBC1, it stars John Nettles as the title character Detective Sergeant Jim Bergerac, a detective in Le Bureau des Étrangers, part of the States of Jersey Police....
The Bill
Character:
The daily lives of the men and women at Sun Hill Police Station as they fight crime on the streets of London. From bomb threats to armed robbery and drug raids to the routine demands of policing this ground-breaking series focuses as much on crime as it does on the personal lives of its characters....
Tales of the Unexpected
Character: Mrs Pardoe
A British television anthology of stories, often with sinister and wryly comedic undertones, and a twist at the end. With early episodes written and presented by Roald Dahl, the series featured a plethora of big name guest stars....
Sherlock Holmes
Character: Miss Ruddock
Sherlock Holmes uses his abilities to take on cases by private clients and those that the Scotland Yard are unable to solve, along with his friend Dr. Watson....
The Young Ones
Character: Old Woman Next Door
The misadventures of four lunatic students who live in a shared student house. There's Rick, the overblown political one addicted to Cliff Richard, Vyvyan the experimental scientific one/part-time anarchist, Neil the worried hippy, and Mike the ladies' man (at least he is in his mind)....
One Foot In the Grave
Character: Elspeth
One Foot in the Grave is a BBC television sitcom series The series features the exploits of Victor Meldrew and his long-suffering wife, Margaret. The programmes invariably deal with Meldrew's battle against the problems he creates for himself. Living in a typical household in an unnamed English suburb, Victor takes involuntary early retirement. His various efforts to keep himself busy, while encountering various misfortunes and misunderstandings are the themes of the sitcom. The series was larg...
Coogan's Run
Character:
Coogan's Run was a 1995 UK TV series featuring Steve Coogan as a series of odd characters living in the fictional town of Ottle. It was written by various people including Coogan, Patrick Marber, David Tyler, Graham Linehan, Arthur Mathews, Geoffrey Perkins and Henry Normal. The series consists of six self-contained stories, although Coogan's characters from the other episodes in the series make occasional cameo appearances....
Angels
Character:
Angels is a BBC medical soap-opera which launched on 1st September 1975 and was the blue print for such medical soaps as Casualty, Holby City, plus daytime soap, Doctors. The medical soap focuses on different departments within Heath Green Hospital and was a highly successful continuing drama....
Play for Today
Character:
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 Six Wives of Henry VIII
Character: Lady Boleyn
Series of television plays written by six different authors. Each play is a lavish dramatization of the trials and tribulations surrounding Henry and his wives. Keith Michell ties the episodes together with his dignified and magnetic performance as the mighty monarch....
Suspense
Character:
Anthology series telling suspenseful tales....
Within These Walls
Character:
Within These Walls is a British television drama programme made by London Weekend Television for ITV and shown between 1974 and 1978. It portrayed life in HMP Stone Park, a fictional women's prison. Unlike the later women-in-prison TV series Prisoner and Bad Girls, Within These Walls tended to centre its storylines around the prison staff rather than the inmates. The lead character was the well-groomed, genteel governor Faye Boswell, and episodes revolved around her attempts to liberalise the p...
BBC Play of the Month
Character: Mrs. Elton
Play of the Month is a BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays which were usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983; the producer most associated with the Play of the Month was Cedric Messina. Some of the 121 episodes are missing from the archives, having been junked in the 1960s and 1970...
Maigret
Character:
BBC series based on the novels by Georges Simenon which starred Rupert Davies as Inspector Maigret, a French police detective who preferred to watch and listen in order to solve crimes. The series ran from 1960-63 on British television....
Nicholas Nickleby
Character: Mrs. Nickleby
Adaptation of the Dickens novel....
The Phoenix and the Carpet
Character:
Adaptation of E Nesbit’s story about an Edwardian family in London, who experience a series of extraordinary and magical events....
Poldark
Character: Mrs. Carne
Period drama series about the brooding rivalry between former soldier Ross Poldark and local industrialist George Warleggan, and the two women in their lives. Based on the books by Winston Graham....
Paul Temple
Character:
Paul Temple is a British-German television series . It features Francis Matthews as Paul Temple, the fictional detective created by Francis Durbridge, who solves crimes with the assistance of his wife Steve. Paul Temple used overseas locations in France, Malta, Germany and elsewhere. T...
Minder
Character: Mrs. Mayhew
This comedy drama series featured Terry McCann, a former boxer with a conviction for G.B.H., and Arthur Daley, a second-hand car dealer with an eye for a nice little earner. Alongside his many business ventures, Arthur would regularly hire Terry out as a minder or bodyguard, later replaced by nephew, Ray Daley....
The Main Chance
Character: Agnes McLaren
The Main Chance was a British television series which first aired on ITV between 1969,1970,1972 and 1975. A drama, it depicts the sudden transformation in the life of solicitor David Main who relocates from London to Leeds....
Lovejoy
Character: Mrs. Greenlands
The adventures of the eponymous Lovejoy, a likeable but roguish antiques dealer based in East Anglia. Within the trade, he has a reputation as a “divvie”, a person with an almost supernatural powers for recognising exceptional items as well as distinguishing genuine antique from clever fakes or forgeries....
Campion
Character: Mrs. Munsey
Campion is a television show made by the BBC, adapting the Albert Campion mystery novels written by Margery Allingham. Two series were made, in 1989 and 1990, starring Peter Davison as Campion, Brian Glover as his manservant Magersfontein Lugg and Andrew Burt as his policeman friend Stanislaus Oates. A total of eight novels were adapted, four in each series, each of which was originally broadcast as two separate hour-long episodes. Peter Davison sang the title music for the first series himself...
The Detectives
Character: First Old Lady
The absurd adventures of two defective detectives, who - despite unbelievable incompetence - somehow manage to solve their cases (or be nearby when the cases are solved) and retain their jobs....
Pie in the Sky
Character: Mrs. Lonsdale
Pie in the Sky is a British offbeat police comedy drama programme starring Richard Griffiths and Maggie Steed, created by Andrew Payne and first broadcast in five series on BBC1 between 13 March 1994 and 17 August 1997 as well as being syndicated on other channels in other countries, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The series departs slightly from other police dramas in that the protagonist, Henry Crabbe, while still being an on-duty policeman, is also the head chef of the tit...
Justice
Character: Mrs. Garside
Justice is a British drama television series which originally aired on ITV in 39 hour-long episodes between 8 August 1971 and 16 October 1974. Margaret Lockwood stars as Harriet Peterson a female barrister in the North of England. It was made by Yorkshire Television and was based loosely on Justice Is a Woman, an episode of ITV Playhouse broadcast in 1969 in which Lockwood had previously also played a barrister. The theme music was Crown Imperial by William Walton....
Maid Marian and Her Merry Men
Character: Gladys
Maid Marian and her Merry Men is a British children's sitcom created and written by Tony Robinson and directed by David Bell. It began in 1989 on BBC One and ran for four series, with the last episode shown in 1994. The show was a partially musical comic retelling of the legend of Robin Hood, placing Maid Marian in the role of leader of the Merry Men, and reducing Robin to an incompetent ex-tailor. The programme was much appreciated by children and adults alike, and has been likened to Blackadd...
Agatha Christie's Poirot
Character: Mrs. Hill
From England to Egypt, accompanied by his elegant and trustworthy sidekicks, the intelligent yet eccentrically-refined Belgian detective Hercule Poirot pits his wits against a collection of first class deceptions....
Bergerac
Character: Miss Amberton
Bergerac is a British television show set on Jersey. Produced by the BBC in association with the Seven Network, and first screened on BBC1, it stars John Nettles as the title character Detective Sergeant Jim Bergerac, a detective in Le Bureau des Étrangers, part of the States of Jersey Police....
Miss Marple: The Moving Finger
Character: Emily Barton
The residents of a quiet English village begin to receive nasty, threatening letters. The wife of the local vicar calls in her friend Miss Marple to investigate....
Miss Marple
Character: Emily Barton
Miss Marple, the spinster detective who is one of the most famous characters created by English crime writer Agatha Christie, is portrayed by Joan Hickson who starred in a dozen television mysteries about Miss Marple over the course of a decade....
The Legend of King Arthur
Character: Midwife
This 8-part drama brings high romance, low treachery and magical adventure via a host of legendary characters: wise old Merlin, brave Sir Lancelot, King Arthur, ruler of all Britain and master of the Knights of the Round Table, the beguiling Queen Guinevere and her nemesis Morgan la Fay. Dark Ages wizard Merlin (Robert Eddison), weary of the barbarism around him, creates a new order of enlightenment and justice with a youthful Arthur (Andrew Burt) at its head. Merlin gifts Arthur with the magic ...
Worzel Gummidge
Character: Miss Fogg
Worzel Gummidge is a children's comedy series, produced by Southern Television for ITV, based on the books by Barbara Euphan Todd. Starting in 1979, the programme starred Jon Pertwee in the title role and ran for four series in the UK until 1981. Channel 4 reprised the show in 1987 as Worzel Gummidge Down Under, which was set in New Zealand....
Brendon Chase
Character: Beatrix Holcombe
The three brothers Robin, John and Harold spend their vacations in 1925 on the country estate of their aunt Ellen. But instead of fun and games, the young men are expected to be extremely disciplined. And it gets worse: Harold falls ill and his brothers are to be quarantined. That's enough for the young adventurers! So they escape and hide in the forest. This is the beginning of a life they have always dreamed of. But it is not as easy as they had imagined. So the boys have to find shelter in a ...
Three Up, Two Down
Character: Joan
Comedy series about Nick and Angie, a young married couple, Angie's snobbish mother Daphne, and Nick's cockney father Sam. Much of the humour arises from the fact that the mismatched Daphne and Sam are forced by circumstances to share the flat below that occupied by their children....
Movie Credits
Don't Look Now
Character: Heather
While grieving a terrible loss, a married couple meet two mysterious sisters, one of whom gives them a message sent from the afterlife....
Dolls
Character: Hilary Hartwicke
A precocious girl, her nasty parents, two punk-rock losers and a weak-kneed salesman inadvertently become the guests of two ghoulish senior citizens in their dark, haunted mansion....
The One and Only Phyllis Dixey
Character: Medium
Aspiring dancer Phyllis Dixey makes her name as a stripper....
A Last Visitor for Mr. Hugh Peter
Character: Kidderminster
In prison the night before his execution, republican preacher Hugh Peter prepares to be hanged, drawn and quartered for treason...
I Don't Want to Be Born
Character: Mrs. Hyde
A woman gives birth to a baby, but this is no ordinary little tyke. The child is seemingly possessed by the spirit of a freak dwarf who the mother once spurned. Cue a spate of strange deaths, the one common factor being the presence of a baby in pram at the scene......
Robot Jox
Character: Professor Laplace
50 years after a nuclear war, the two superpowers handle territorial disputes in a different way. Each fields a giant robot to fight one-on-one battles in official matches, each piloted by a man inside, known as robot jockeys or jox. The contest for possession of Alaska will be fought by two of the best. The conscientious Achilles fights for the Americans. Opposing him is a Russian, Alexander....
Ghost in the Water
Character: Nan
Judith Allchurch and Ian Stevens star in this drama based on the story by Edward Chitham. When young historians Teresa (Allchurch) and David (Stevens) discover that the name on a piece of embroidered cloth belonging to Teresa's family matches that of a strange gravestone in the local churchyard, their intrique is piqued and they set out to find out what happened to the mysterious Abigail Parkes....
Meridian
Character: Martha
After her father’s death, Catherine returns to her family’s gothic castle in Italy and gets caught in the web of a mysterious love triangle....
Absolution
Character: Miss Froggatt
At a Catholic boys' school, domineering disciplinarian Father Goddard rules over his pupils with an iron hand. When one of his teenage charges confesses to murder, the dogmatic but deeply repressed Goddard finds his faith challenged and his life spiralling dangerously out of control....
All Passion Spent
Character: Edith
his three-part miniseries begins with elderly Lady Slane (Wendy Hiller) sitting watchfully by the deathbed of her husband. Tended by her equally aged French maid Genoux (Eileen Way), who has served her faithfully for a lifetime, Lady Slane deals with a succession of advice from her large flock of middle-aged children. The family is chagrined by, but honors, her choice to live a modest country retirement at some distance, in Hampstead Heath. Lady Slane competently comes to terms to lease and rest...
The Curse of the Claw
Character: Kevin's Mother
Sir Kevin Orr is anxious to return the Sacred Claw of the Naga hills given him as a child by his uncle Jack but warned that unless it is returned before his sixtieth birthday the curse of the claw will kill him. He sets sail to return it but falls for the ship's female officer,who throws the claw overboard,killing everybody but Kevin. Years later the claw has returned and on his sixtieth birthday Kevin finds his wife Agatha dead,the claw beside her. He finally sends the claw back to the Naga hil...
Afraid of the Dark
Character: Basement Woman
A little boy, obsessed with blindness and violence, slowly gets trapped in his own delusions....
An Affair in Mind
Character: Miss Platt
A young novelist falls for a married blond beauty. She's too afraid to leave her thuggish husband and the idea of "accidental" death comes up. The writer doesn't go through with it and they break off. However, she's not done with him yet....
The Heat of the Day
Character: Mrs. Tringsby
In World War II England, a woman is approached by a man claiming to work as an intelligence agent who has found out her lover is a spy. He promises to not arrest him if she'll have a relationship with him....
Ten Years in an Open Necked Shirt
Character: Mother Cyrene
A portrait of Salford-born poet, storyteller and comic, John Cooper-Clarke. His poems, a satirical blend of humour and social comment, are delivered at a fast pace, often with musical backing. His style, and that of his contemporary Linton Kwesi Johnson, have influenced a generation of younger poets involved in a revival of popular poetry in Britain....
The Return of the Soldier
Character: Ward
The horrors of World War I have robbed returning veteran Chris Baldry of his memory. The traumatized soldier doesn't even recognize his own wife, Kitty, or remember their years together. While Baldry attempts to cope with the unfamiliar surroundings of his own home, he seeks out the company of an old flame from his childhood, Margaret Grey. His amnesia also makes him a ready target for the affections of his older cousin, Jenny....
Haunted
Character: Elderly Lady
Professor David Ash exposes false spiritulists and mediums. He is invited to Edbrook to resolve the fears and torments within its secretive family. Soon after arriving Ash begins to doubt his own senses, and watching the strange behaviour of its residents does not make his task any easier. In time, he finds there's more to Edbrook than even he can debunk....
84 Charing Cross Road
Character: Voice of Joan Todd
Adaptation of the Helene Hanff memoir, presented as part of Play for Today....
Early Struggles
Character: Mum
Kevin's wife walked out, and left him holding the baby. No sleep, dirty nappies - and a career in pop music at risk. And ahead lies a visit to the clinic. Will Kevin succeed as a mother?...
The Last Vampyre
Character: Miss Ruddock
Sherlock Holmes investigates strange and tragic happenings in a village that appear linked to a man who seems to be like a vampire....
Just Love
Character: Mrs Herbert
A drama following the romance between Ed, who has a reputation for treating girls badly, and Jenny, who comes to work in the factory canteen, and how they come to realise that they genuinely care for each other and fall in love....
Days
Character: Mother
'When I was your age I wanted to go to Italy more than anything in the world ... old buildings .. , sunlight. Blue skies ... the air full of the sound of bells in the morning and at dusk.' A mother, waiting for a visit through a hospital day, looks back on her life. Dreams haunt her, fantasies seduce her, memories crowd in on her, distorting the drab reality of her day to day existence. Must her daughter follow in her footsteps? How can she find a way to guide her towards a brighter future?...