ICE COLD IN SYLVIA
Respected veteran actress Sylvia Syms has died aged 89. Her prolific 60-year career began in the late 50s, with her first role of note as a young delinquent in 1956’s My Teenage Daughter. She rounded off the decade in fine form, being nominated for a BAFTA in drama Woman in a Dressing Gown and memorably playing a spirited nurse (later immortalised in a Danish beer ad!) in wartime thriller Ice Cold in Alex.
A mainstay of British film for years to come, Syms established her range over the coming decade. She ably did both comedy and drama, and portrayed everything from a stripper in Expresso Bongo to a nun helping save Jewish children from the Holocaust in Conspiracy of Hearts. Her final BAFTA nomination came as the wife of a gay diplomat in 1974’s The Tamarind Seed. Though her film career waned afterwards to an intermittent capacity, she forged through with a steady TV and theatre career for the rest of her life that included Doctor Who story Ghost Light, dressmaker Olive Woodhouse in EastEnders, the narrator of Talking Pictures, and various portrayals of Thatcher.
The most memorable of her latter film roles came in 2006’s The Queen, where she played the Queen Mother in the PR minefield landscape that was the aftermath of Princess Di’s death. She received the OBE in 2007, and in her final year was a Denville Hall resident. Initially thought to not be a DDP pick, it turned out her name was misspelt as “Sims” in the database. Instead four teams picked her – BANGELS, Final Curtain Calls, EastEnders theme Not Going in a Black Cab, and Waiting for the Hearse.
Sylvia Syms
6 January 1934 – 27 January 2023, aged 89
4 TEAMS (💀💀💀💀💀💀 6 POINTS)