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Dame Thora Hird (28 May 1911 – 15 March 2003) was an English actress. In a career spanning over 70 years, she appeared in more than 100 films, as well as many television roles, becoming a household name and a British institution.
Hird was a three-time winner of the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress, for (1989), (1999) and Lost for Words (2000). She also received a BAFTA Special Award in 1994. Her film credits included The Love Match (1955), The Entertainer (1960), A Kind of Loving (1962) and The Nightcomers (1971).
Hird often described her father, who initially did not want her to be an actress, as her sternest critic and attributed much of her talent as an actress and comedian to his guidance. In 1944 she made her West End debut in the Esther McCracken play No Medals.
Although Hird left Morecambe in the late 1940s, she retained her affection for the town, referring to herself as a "sand grown 'un", the colloquial term for anyone born in Morecambe.
Initially, Hird made regular appearances in films, including the wartime propaganda film Went the Day Well? (1942, known as 48 Hours in the USA), in which she is shown wielding a rifle to defend a house from German paratroopers. She worked with the British film comedian Will Hay and featured in The Entertainer (1960), which starred Laurence Olivier, as well as A Kind of Loving (1962) with Alan Bates and June Ritchie.
Hird gained her highest profile in television comedy, notably the situation comedy Meet the Wife (1963–66), In Loving Memory (1979–86), Hallelujah! (1983–84) and, for nearly two decades, as Edie Pegden in Last of the Summer Wine (1986–2003). Hird played a variety of roles, including the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, and won BAFTA Best Actress awards for her roles in two of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads monologues.
Hird starred as Captain Emily Ridley in the sitcom Hallelujah! (1983–84) about the Salvation Army, a movement which she supported throughout her life. Hird also portrayed Mrs Speck, the housekeeper of the Mayor of Gloucester, in The Tailor of Gloucester (1989).
In 1993 she played Annie Longden, mother of Deric Longden in Wide-Eyed and Legless (known as The Wedding Gift outside the UK) and reprised her role in the 1999 TV film Lost for Words, which won her a BAFTA for Best Actress.
Her final acting work was for BBC Radio 7, which was recorded in 2002 and broadcast some months after her death: a monologue written for her by Alan Bennett entitled The Last of the Sun, in which she played a forthright, broad-minded woman, immobile in an old people's home but still able to take a stand against the censorious and politically correct attitudes of her own daughter.
Hird underwent a heart bypass operation in 1992. She suffered from severe osteoarthritis, had repeated hip replacements and used a wheelchair in her later life.
In July 2019, a commemorative blue plaque to Thora Hird was installed by The Theatre and Film Guild of Great Britain and America, at the Bayswater home where she lived for over 50 years. "Dame Thora Hird is Commemorated" , the Music Hall Guild of Great Britain and America, accessed 7 July 2019
| 1942 | The Black Sheep of Whitehall | Joyce | |
| 1942 | Went the Day Well? | Ivy Dawking | |
| 1942 | Go to Blazes | Elsie | Short |
| 1942 | The Next of Kin | ATS Driver | |
| 1944 | Two Thousand Women | Mrs. Burtshaw | |
| 1947 | The Courtneys of Curzon Street | Maud | |
| 1948 | Corridor of Mirrors | Visitor in Madame Tussauds | |
| 1948 | My Brother Jonathan | Ada | |
| 1948 | Mrs. Gaye | ||
| 1949 | Once a Jolly Swagman | Ma Fox | |
| 1949 | Lost Daughter | Mrs. Skinner | |
| 1949 | Fools Rush In | Mrs. Coot | |
| 1949 | A Boy, a Girl and a Bike | Mrs. Bates | |
| 1949 | Conspirator | Broaders | |
| 1949 | Madness of the Heart | Rosa | |
| 1949 | Maytime in Mayfair | Janet | |
| 1949 | Mrs. Dorbell | ||
| 1949 | Boys in Brown | Mrs. Knowles | |
| 1950 | Once a Sinner | Mrs. James | |
| 1950 | The Magnet | Nanny's Friend | |
| 1951 | The Galloping Major | Tea Stall Proprietress | |
| 1952 | Vera | ||
| 1952 | Mrs. Cornelius | ||
| 1952 | Time Gentlemen, Please! | Alice Crouch | |
| 1953 | Mrs. Pewsey | ||
| 1953 | Miss Rawlings | ||
| 1953 | Street Corner | Mrs. Perkins | |
| 1953 | Turn the Key Softly | Mrs. Rowan | |
| 1953 | Personal Affair | Mrs. Usher | |
| 1953 | Background | Mrs. Humphries | |
| 1953 | Mrs. Trott | ||
| 1954 | Eunice's mother | ||
| 1954 | Don't Blame the Stork | Agnes O'Connor | |
| 1954 | For Better, for Worse | Mrs. Doyle | |
| 1954 | Tiger by the Tail | Mary | |
| 1955 | Sal Brown | ||
| 1955 | The Quatermass Xperiment | Rosie | |
| 1955 | Simon and Laura | Jessie | |
| 1955 | One Good Turn | Cook | |
| 1956 | Women Without Men | Granny Rafferty | |
| 1956 | Sailor Beware! | Mrs. Lack | |
| 1956 | Home and Away | Margie | |
| 1957 | Mrs. Oakroyd | ||
| 1957 | These Dangerous Years | Mrs. Larkin | |
| 1958 | Further Up the Creek | Mrs. Galloway | |
| 1958 | Vera Watson | Short | |
| 1960 | Ada Lapford | ||
| 1961 | Over the Odds | Mrs. Carter | |
| 1962 | Mrs. Rothwell | ||
| 1962 | Term of Trial | Mrs. Taylor | |
| 1963 | Bitter Harvest | Mrs. Jessup | |
| 1964 | Rattle of a Simple Man | Mrs. Winthram | |
| 1970 | Some Will, Some Won't | Agnes Russell | |
| 1971 | Mrs. Grose | ||
| 1983 | Entry | Narrator | Short |
| 1988 | Consuming Passions | Mrs. Gordon | |
| 1999 | Julie and the Cadillacs | Julie's grandmother |
| 1947 | Mary Rose | Mrs. Otery | TV film |
| 1949 | Violet | TV film | |
| 1951 | Sunday Night Theatre | Anna Priashkina | Episode: "The Bachelor" |
| 1951 | What Happens to Love | Mrs. Rowbotham | TV film |
| 1955 | Emmie Slee | TV film | |
| 1955 | Ada | Episode: "A Husband for Marian" | |
| 1956 | Armchair Theatre | Momma Brodsky | Episode: "The Same Sky" |
| 1958 | Saturday Playhouse | Aggie Thompson | Episode: "So Many Children" |
| 1959 | Blackpool Show Parade | Mrs. McTaggart | Episode: "Happy Days" |
| 1960 | Bootsie and Snudge | Emily | Episode: "Johnson's Retirement" |
| 1961 | ITV Playhouse | Helen Curvis | Episode: "Hi Diddle Diddle" |
| 1963 | Z-Cars | Mrs. Edwards | Episode: "Nothing Serious" |
| 1963 | Drama 61-67 | Mrs. Hope | Episode: "Drama '63: Albert Hope" |
| 1963 | Comedy Playhouse | Thora Blacklock | Episode: "The Bed" |
| 1963–1966 | Meet the Wife | Thora Blacklock | Main role |
| 1964 | First Night | Queenie | Episode: "All Things Bright and Beautiful" |
| 1964 | Festival | Mrs. Baines | Episode: "Say Nothing" |
| 1965 | My Perfect Husband | Thora | TV film |
| 1966 | Blanche Hoskins | Episode: "Who's a Good Boy Then?" | |
| 1966 | Dixon of Dock Green | Alice Leggett | Episode: "Face at the Window" |
| 1966 | Jackanory | Storyteller | 5 episodes |
| 1967, 1975 | Play of the Month | Nurse, Clara Soppitt | Episodes: "Romeo and Juliet", "When We Are Married" |
| 1968–69 | Sarah Danby | Main role | |
| 1969 | ITV Sunday Night Theatre | Mrs. Ogden | Episode: "It Calls for a Great Deal of Love" |
| 1969–70 | Ours Is a Nice House | Thora Parker | TV series |
| 1971 | Seasons of the Year | Widow Butley | Episode: "The Three Graces" |
| 1971 | Stage 2 | Mrs. Hardcastle | Episode: "She Stoops to Conquer" |
| 1971–72, 1977, 1982 | Play for Today | Gwen, Doris, Olive Major, Aunty Kitty | Episodes: "The Fox Trot", "The Villa Maroc", "The Mayor's Charity", "Intensive Care" |
| 1974 | Billy Liar | Miss Duggins | Episode: "Billy and the Bed-Sit" |
| 1975 | Mary Meegan | Episode: "Dorothy's Birthday" | |
| 1977 | Mrs. Battley | TV short | |
| 1977 | Young at Heart | Ethel Collyer | Episode: "Pilot" |
| 1978 | Me! I'm Afraid of Virginia Woolf | Mrs. Hopkins | TV film |
| 1979 | Thomas & Sarah | Mrs. Entwistle | Episode: "Made in Heaven" |
| 1979–86 | In Loving Memory | Ivy Unsworth | Main role |
| 1980–82 | Flesh and Blood | Mabel Brassington | TV series |
| 1983 | Objects of Affection | Elizabeth Mary Rhodes | Episode: "Say Something Happened" |
| 1983–84 | Hallelujah! | Capt. Emily Ridley | Main role |
| 1986–2003 | Last of the Summer Wine | Edie Pegden | Regular role |
| 1988, 1998 | Talking Heads | Doris, Violet | Episodes: "A Cream Cracker Under the Settee", "Waiting for the Telegram" |
| 1989 | Mrs. Speck | TV film | |
| 1989–90 | All Creatures Great and Small | Mrs. Clarke | Episodes: "The Best Time", "Promises to Keep" |
| 1990 | Old Betsy | TV film | |
| 1991 | Perfect Scoundrels | Martha | Episode: "Grandmother's Footsteps" |
| 1992 | Edna Wood | Episode: "Her Finest Hour" | |
| 1992 | Memento Mori | Jean Taylor | Screen Two series 8 |
| 1993 | Wide-Eyed and Legless (known as The Wedding Gift outside the UK) | Annie Longden | |
| 1993 | Goggle Eyes | Mrs. Harrington | Episode: "1.1" |
| 1994 | Pat and Margaret | Jim's mother | |
| 1994 | Under the Hammer | Nanny Tucker | Episode: "The Spectre at the Feast" |
| 1994 | Heartbeat | Hannah Stockdale | Episode: "Lost and Found" |
| 1995, 1999 | Postmistress | Episodes: "1.1", "1.4", "Harmony's Return" | |
| 1998 | Dinnerladies | Enid | Episode: "Moods" |
| 1999 | Ida | Episode: "Philosophy of a Hairdresser" | |
| 1999 | Hilltop Hospital | Gracey Greyshell | Episode: "Gracey Greyshell's Last Day" |
| 1999 | Lost for Words | Annie Longden | TV film |
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