Quirky actress played memorable scene with John Lennon in A Hard Day’s Night

Life Story

‘‘I’m blind as a bat, 6ft tall, with bright red hair and a crooked nose. Who needs a gimmick after that?’’

Anna Quayle actress b October 6, 1932 d August 16, 2019

Anna Quayle, who has died aged 86, was distraught when she tumbled from a ladder while earning some pin money as a young model and aspiring actress. The accident left her nose broken in three places.

She was a student at Rada and, fearing the disfiguration might end her career before it had even started, she asked her actor father what she should do. ‘‘Daddy told me, ‘It’s a great prop,’ ’’ she recalled. ‘‘So I never had it straightened.’’

It was sound advice, and her distinctive looks became an integral part of her marketability as a character actress whose credits ranged from a famous scene with John

Lennon in the

Beatles’ film A

Hard Day’s Night

to playing teacher Mrs Monroe in the BBC children’s TV series Grange Hill. ‘‘I’m blind as a bat, 6ft tall, with bright red hair and a crooked nose. Who needs a gimmick after that?’’ she quipped.

After she graduated from Rada in 1956, her ambition was to storm the stage as a classical thespian. However, she soon came to the realisation that her talents lay elsewhere.

Her crooked nose was only part of her quirky appeal. ‘‘I found that I do some things no matter what I’m doing,’’ she said. ‘‘Before I knew it I was developing a style of facial mannerisms and gestures that seemed better suited to the revue stage.’’

Her breakthrough came in the West End revue Look Who’s Here! in 1960. The News of the World adored her ‘‘saucy charm’’, and others hailed her as a new Joyce Grenfell.

She was soon cast in Stop the World – I Want to Get Off, in which she played four women competing for the affections of Anthony Newley, who wrote, directed and starred in the musical. The show’s success took her for the first and only time to Broadway, where she was dubbed ‘‘Britain’s new comedy queen’’ and won a Tony award for best featured actress in a musical. It opened on Broadway in the same week that an unknown group from Liverpool were releasing their first single, Love Me Do.

Two years later Quayle and the Beatles made their film debuts together in A Hard Day’s Night. She didn’t get a singing part, despite having a fine voice, but her appearance in a one-on-one scene with Lennon was none the less memorable. As Millie, a fan who encounters the Beatles backstage on their way to their dressing rooms, she thinks that she recognises Lennon, only for him to convince her in a wonderfully absurdist exchange that it isn’t really him. He then tells her that ‘‘everyone knows’’ she has been making out with the real Lennon. The scene ends with her telling the Beatle: ‘‘You don’t look like him at all.’’

She did land a singing part in the 1968 film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, in which she played Baroness Bomburst, singing ‘‘you’re the apfelstrudel of mein eye’’ to her on-screen husband Gert Frobe in the comic duet Chuchi Face.

She was born Anne Veronica Maria Quayle in Birmingham to parents Douglas and Kathleen, who were both actors. Her father put her on stage for the first time when she was aged 3.

Her upbringing was staunchly Catholic and she was educated at a convent school in north London, an experience that she drew upon when playing a tartar-like reverend mother in the 1982 ITV sitcom Father Charlie.

There was less of a real-life model when she donned a nun’s habit in the sex comedy Eskimo Nell (1975), in which she cavorted as a karate-loving mother superior who chopped up everything in sight. She later described the film as ‘‘a bit embarrassing’’.

Later stage successes included a splendid Madame Arcati in a 1980 tour of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, which led The Stage to acclaim her as ‘‘the most original of comediennes . . . her beautifully refined tones are a joy’’. Equally striking was her Madame Dubonnet, which all but stole the 30thanniversary revival of The Boy Friend in 1984.

To a younger generation she was best known as Mrs Monroe, the form tutor to R1 in the long-running Grange Hill. Nicknamed ‘‘Marilyn’’ by her irreverent pupils, she appeared in 85 episodes between 1990 and 1994.

Other notable film credits included playing opposite Tony Curtis in Drop Dead Darling (1966), the James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967) and Frankie Howerd’s Up the Chastity Belt (1971).

Remembered by friends and colleagues as generous and kind-hearted, she was a great cat lover and had a penchant for naming her pets after her real-life heroes. One favourite was named Lenny Bruce.

She is survived by her husband and former manager Donald Baker, whom she married in 1976, and their daughter Katy Nova, who was nicknamed ‘‘the Jackanory baby’’ by nurses in the London hospital where she was born. At the time her mother was a storyteller on the BBC children’s TV programme. – The Times