Morag Hood (12 December 1942 – 5 October 2002) was a British actress who featured in numerous television programmes, stage productions, and audio presentations in the United Kingdom from the 1960s up to the late 1990s.
Early life
Hood was born in
Glasgow,
Scotland, and attended Bellahouston Academy. She was a graduate of the University of Glasgow.
Career
Television
One of Hood's earliest jobs was as a presenter of youth programmes on Scottish Television in 1963. In April 1964, she and fellow presenter Paul Young interviewed
the Beatles.
The interview, recorded at the Scottish Television studios in
Cowcaddens, Glasgow, was thought to be lost for many years. The reel of 16mm film was found in 2008, in a rusting film can in a south London garage.
She is best known for playing Natasha Rostova in the epic 1972 BBC television adaptation of War and Peace,[ Sense of Guilt at IMDb]
Stage
Hood's first stage appearance was in
Sam Cree's
Wedding Fever in 1964, at the Metropole in Glasgow. On London's West End, she appeared in
The Servant of Two Masters in 1968, and
A Streetcar Named Desire in 1974,
and three David Greig plays, among other shows. She received acclaim in 2001 for her final stage performance, in
A Listening Heaven, by
Torben Betts, at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. She was nominated for Best Actress in that year's TMA Awards.
Personal life
Morag Hood died in a
London hospice on 5 October 2002, from
cancer, at the age of 59.
She had two elder siblings: Liam Hood (the late Scottish TV executive) and Eila Ferguson. She lived in Fountayne Road,
Stoke Newington (for a while with
Martin Shaw, with whom she was romantically involved) but never married and had no children. In her later years, she was close to musician Sting and his wife
Trudie Styler and to actress Siân Phillips.
External links
