Hollyoaks and Emmerdale actress Georgina Hale has died aged 80.
BAFTA led tributes to Hale who had a film, TV and theatre career spanning five decades.
"We're saddened to learn of the passing of Georgina Hale," the independent arts charity for the screen industries said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
"Well known for her award-winning work in the films of Ken Russell, she was awarded Most Promising Newcomer To Leading Film Roles in 1975."
The Essex-born star is believed to have passed away on January 4, but her death was only revealed on January 10. A cause of death has yet to disclosed.
While her legion of fans on the social media platform hailed her "unmistakable voice" and described her as "fabulous in everything".
In 2010, Hale was listed as one of ten great British character actors by The Guardian, but her journey to get there was not an easy one.
Born Georgina Hole to publicans Elsie (née Fordham) and George Robert Hole, as a girl she kept changing school as her parents moved around different pubs – something she believed damaged her education.
Opening up about it to the Glasgow Herald in 2002, she said: “I couldn’t write, spell or read. There was a real shame in it, and you were the dunce of the class, always getting whacked around the head.”
Her mother died when she was 18, followed by her father four years later. At the age of 19, having never visited a theatre, she was given tickets to see West Side Story, which, she said, “blew my mind”.
She was working in London, as a junior with a Knightsbridge hairdresser, when she spotted an actors’ workshop in Chelsea teaching the Stanislavski technique of method acting. This led her to train at Rada, graduating in 1965.
Tweaking her professional name to Hale, she began her career with the Royal Shakespeare Company in walk-on roles at both Stratford-upon-Avon and the Aldwych theatre, London (1965-66).
Her West End debut came in The Seagull, by Chekhov, at the Duke of York’s theatre in 1976.
She then starred as Bobbi Michele, alongside Lee Montague, in the British premiere of Neil Simon’s play Last of the Red Hot Lovers at the Royal Exchange theatre, Manchester in 1979.
Both the big and small screen also came calling.
Hale made her film debut in the historical drama Eagle in a Cage (1971) as Betsy Balcombe, opposite Kenneth Haigh as Napoleon Bonaparte.In cinema, she was best known for her roles in Ken Russell films during the 1970s.
This included the 1974 film Mahler, based on the life of composer Gustav Mahler, in which Hale portrayed Alma, his musically ambitious wife, for which she won the BAFTA award.
She played Beryl Chugspoke in Emmerdale in 2006 and Blanche Longford in Hollyoaks in 2010-11.
Hale also appeared in The Bill, Casualty and Holby City - and in Doctor Who in 1988 opposite Sylvester McCoy.
She also portrayed the tea-drinking sorceress T-Bag in the beloved children's series.
Hale married actor John Forgeham in 1964, but they later divorced.
