Patricia Routledge



Katherine Patricia Routledge, CBE (born 17 February 1929), known professionally as Patricia Routledge, is an English actress and singer. She is best known for her role as Hyacinth Bucket in the British television series Keeping Up Appearances, which ran from 1990 to 1995.

She made her professional stage debut at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1952 and her Broadway debut in How's the World Treating You in 1966. In 1968, she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role in Darling of the Day. Other theatre credits include Candide, for which she won the 1988 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical.

On television, she came to prominence during the 1980s in monologues written by Victoria Wood and Alan Bennett, appearing as Kitty in Victoria Wood As Seen On TV (1985–86) and in Bennett's A Woman of No Importance (1982) and Talking Heads (1988). For the latter, she was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. For her role as Hyacinth in Keeping Up Appearances she received two further BAFTA nominations. She also starred as Hetty Wainthropp in the British television series Hetty Wainthropp Investigates (1995–99).

Her film roles include, To Sir, with Love with Sidney Poitier (1967) and Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River with Jerry Lewis (1968).



Contents
[hide]  *1 Early life and education  ==Early life and education[edit] == She was born Katherine Patricia Routledge in Tranmere, Birkenhead, then a part of Cheshire, to parents Catherine and Isaac Routledge.[1]  Her father was a haberdasher[2]  and during the Second World War, the family lived weeks at a time in the basement of her father's shop.
 * 2 Career
 * 2.1 Theatre
 * 2.2 Film and television
 * 2.3 Radio and audio books
 * 3 Personal life
 * 4 Filmography
 * 4.1 Film and television work
 * 4.2 Stage work
 * 5 Awards and nominations
 * 6 References
 * 7 External links

She was educated at Mersey Park Primary School, Birkenhead High School,[3]  now a state-funded Academy school, and the University of Liverpool.[4]  At Liverpool she graduated with Honours in English Language and Literature[5] [6]  and was not on a path to pursue an acting career. She was, however, involved in the university's Dramatic Society, where she worked closely with the academic Edmund Colledge, who both directed and acted in several of the society's productions. It was Colledge who persuaded her to pursue an acting career.[7]  After graduating from Liverpool, she trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and launched her acting career at the Liverpool Playhouse.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-8" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[8] ==Career<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] == ===Theatre<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] === <p style="line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Routledge has had a prolific career in theatre, particularly musical theatre, in the United Kingdom and the United States. She has been a long-standing member of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), appearing in such acclaimed productions as the 1983 Richard III, which starred Antony Sher in the title role.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-9" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[9] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-10" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[10]  Her West End credits include Little Mary Sunshine,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-11" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[11]  Cowardy Custard,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-12" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[12]  Virtue in Danger,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-13" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[13]  Noises Off,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-14" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[14]  The Importance of Being Earnest,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-15" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[15] and The Solid Gold Cadillac,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-16" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[16]  as well as a number of less-successful vehicles. A classically trained singer,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-17" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[17]  she has occasionally made forays into operetta; including portraying the title role in an acclaimed production of Jacques Offenbach's La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein at the 1978 Camden Festival.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Routledge made her Broadway debut in Roger Milner's outrageous comedy, How's the World Treating You, in 1966, before returning in the short-lived 1968 musical Darling of the Day,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-18" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[18]  for which she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, sharing the honour with Leslie Uggams of ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallelujah,_Baby! Hallelujah, Baby!]<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-19" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[19]  Following this, Routledge had roles in several more unsuccessful Broadway productions including a musical called Love Match, in which she playedQueen Victoria; the legendary 1976 Leonard Bernstein flop 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, in which she portrayed every U.S. First Lady from Abigail Adams to Edith Roosevelt;<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-20" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[20]  and a 1981 musical, Say Hello to Harvey – based on theMary Coyle Chase play Harvey'' (1944)  – which closed in Toronto before reaching New York City.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-21" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[21]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In 1980, Routledge played Ruth in the Joseph Papp production of The Pirates of Penzance, co-starring American actor Kevin Kline and pop vocalist Linda Ronstadt, at the Delacorte Theatre in New York City's Central Park, one of a series of Shakespeare in the Park summer events.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-22" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[22] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-23" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[23]  The show was a hit and transferred to Broadway the following January, with Estelle Parsons replacing Routledge. A DVD of the Central Park production, with Routledge, was released in October 2002.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">She also performed in Façade at New York City's Carnegie Recital Hall.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-RSCnote_24-0" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[24]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Routledge won a Laurence Olivier Award in 1988 for her portrayal of the Old Lady in Leonard Bernstein's Candide in the London cast of the critically acclaimed Scottish Opera production.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-CatholicHerald_6-1" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[6]  She also played the role of Nettie Fowler to great acclaim in the 1993 London production of Carousel.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-25" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[25]  In a 2006 Hampstead Theatre production of The Best of Friends, she portrayed Dame Laurentia McLachlan.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-26" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[26]  In 2008, she played Queen Mary in Royce Ryton's play Crown Matrimonial.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-27" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[27]  More recent work include the narrator in The Carnival of the Animals with the Nash Ensemble in 2010<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-28" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[28]  and the role of Myra Hess in the play Admission: One Shilling in 2011. ===Film and television<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] === <p style="line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Routledge's screen credits include To Sir, with Love (1967),<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-29" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[29]  Pretty Polly (1967),<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-30" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[30]  The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom (1968),<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-31" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[31]  Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River (1968),<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-32" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[32]  and If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969).

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Routledge's early television appearances included a role in Steptoe and Son, in the episode "Seance in a Wet Rag and Bone Yard" (1974), as a clairvoyant called Madame Fontana. She also appeared in Coronation Street,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-33" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[33]  and as a white witch in Doctor at Large (1971). Also in 1971, Routledge play Mrs. Jennings in the BBC mini-series production of Sense and Sensibility. However, she did not come to prominence on television until she featured in monologueswritten for her by Alan Bennett from 1978 (A Visit from Miss Protheroe), and later Victoria Wood in the 1980s. She first appeared in Alan Bennett's A Woman of No Importance in 1982, and then as the opinionated Kitty in Victoria Wood As Seen On TV in 1985. She performed two further monologues in Bennett's Talking Heads in 1987 and 1998.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In 1990, Routledge landed the role of Hyacinth Bucket in the comedy series Keeping Up Appearances.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-34" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[34]  She portrayed a formerly working-class woman with social pretensions (insisting her surname be pronounced "bouquet") anddelusions of grandeur (her oft-mentioned "candlelight suppers").<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-35" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[35]  Routledge delighted in portraying Hyacinth, as she claimed she couldn't stand people like her in real life. In 1991, she won a British Comedy Award for her portrayal,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-36" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[36] and she was later nominated for two BAFTA TV Awards in 1992 and 1993. The series ended at Routledge's request in 1995.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In 1995, Routledge accepted the lead in another long-running series, playing Hetty Wainthropp in the mystery drama Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, co-starring rising star Dominic Monaghan as her assistant and Derek Benfield as her husband. It first aired in January 1996, and ran until the autumn of 1998, with one special episode in 1999.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">She has also played several real-life characters for television, including Barbara Pym, and, in a dramatised BBC Omnibus biographical documentary of 1994, Hildegard of Bingen.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-37" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[37]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In 2001, Routledge starred in Anybody's Nightmare, a fact-based television drama in which she played a piano teacher who served four years in prison for murdering her elderly aunt, but was acquitted following a retrial.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-38" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[38] ===Radio and audio books<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] === <p style="line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Routledge's extensive radio credits include several Alan Bennett plays and the BBC dramatisation of Carole Hayman's Ladies of Letters, in which she and Prunella Scales play retired women exchanging humorous correspondence over the course of several years.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-39" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[39]  A tenth series of Ladies of Letters premiered on BBC Radio 4 in 2009.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-40" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[40]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Radio work prior to 1985 included Private Lives, Present Laughter, The Cherry Orchard, Romeo and Juliet, Alice in Wonderland, and The Fountain Overflows.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-RSCnote_24-1" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[24]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Having a distinctive voice, Routledge has also recorded and released a variety of audiobooks including unabridged readings of Wuthering Heights and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and abridged novelisations of the Hetty Wainthropp series.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-41" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[41]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In 1966, she sang the role of Mad Margaret in Ruddigore, the title role in Iolanthe, and Melissa in Princess Ida, in a series of BBC radio Gilbert and Sullivan recordings. She took part in a studio broadcast of Tchaikovsky's opera Vakula the Smith (narrating excerpts from the work by Gogol) in 1989.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-42" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[42]  In 2006, she was featured in a programme of the "Stage and Screen" series on Radio 3.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-43" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[43] ==Personal life<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] == <p style="line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">She has never married, has no children, and as of June 2008 resides in Chichester, West Sussex<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-44" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[44]  and regularly worships at Chichester Cathedral.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-CatholicHerald_6-2" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[6]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">She was appointed OBE in 1993 and CBE in 2004.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-biography_5-1" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[5]  As of July 2012, she was a patron of The Beatrix Potter Society.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-45" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[45]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.200000762939453px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In 2008, Routledge received a Doctor of Letters from Lancaster University for her contribution to drama and theatre.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-46" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[46] ==Filmography<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] == ===Film and television work<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] === ===Stage work<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] === ==Awards and nominations<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] ==