Dame Maureen Lipman has been flooded with praise from Coronation Street viewers after she was involved in heartbreaking scenes. The actress plays Evelyn Plummer in the ITV soap and this week, fans watched as the character said a heartbreaking farewell to her beloved dog, Cerberus.
Viewers across the country were breaking their hearts over the scenes after Evelyn heeded her family's advice and took her beloved greyhound to the vets after he refused to eat his favourite tea and appeared less than his usual self. The vet had clear concern for the greyhound and later confirmed Cerberus was suffering from kidney failure and that it was the kindest thing to put him to sleep.
And, after the tear-jerking episode, there was plenty of praise for Evelyn actress Maureen, with fans wanting her to bag some awards. @Zombiechick1967 tweeted: "Give Maureen Lipman any awards going because she deserves them all after that!! #Corrie #CoronationStreet@40SomethingTalk said: "@itvcorrie Maureen Lipman deserves awards for tonight's episode. Having been through what Evelyn is going through I know the raw emotion is so real. The loss of a beloved pet is gut wrenching. #Corrie."
Maureen has been a huge hit with Corrie fans since she took on the role of Evelyn in 2018. It was Tyrone Dobbs' investigations into his parentage that brought him into contact with Evelyn for the first time. He was desperate for answers after discovering that Jackie Dobbs wasn't his real mother, and found evidence that Evelyn's late daughter Cassandra was his biological mother.
Evelyn was initially hostile towards Tyrone, although she later agreed to move into 9 Coronation Street with him, his partner Fiz and their children Hope and Ruby when she was evicted from her home. And she has been a staple of Weatherfield ever since.
But Maureen was an acting legend long before she set foot on the famous cobbles. The Hull-born actress trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and worked extensively in the theatre following her début in a stage production of The Knack at the Palace Theatre, Watford.
She was a member of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company at the Old Vic from 1971 to 1973 and of the Royal Shakespeare Company for its 1973 Stratford season and has continued to work in the theatre for over thirty years. And she recently took a break from Corrie to return to the stage.
Maureen, who was made a dame in the 2020 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to charity, entertainment and the arts, took on the role of Rose in the one-woman show of the same name for sell-out runs at Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester and The Park Theatre, London.
And she's set to reprise the role again, meaning another break from the Salford-based soap, as she takes the one-woman show to the West End later this year. She previously said of the news: "I am delighted to be putting Rose back on her bench for a limited run at the Ambassadors in May. I thought I could never have the power to revisit Martin Sherman’s mystical, magical deeply philosophical and wildly funny creation, but Rose is in my blood, and she has to be revived."
It wasn't until after early appearances in the sitcoms The Lovers, and Doctor at Large, and a role in The Evacuees that Maureen first gained prominence on the telly, landing a role in the situation comedy Agony, in which she played an agony aunt with a troubled private life.
She has since had countless TV roles, both acting and narrating-wise, and the role of Evelyn wasn't her first stint in Corrie. The 75-year-old first appeared as snooty landlady Lillian Spencer in Corrie for six episodes in 2002. The character was employed by Fred Elliott (John Savident) to run The Rovers Return Inn. It was then in August 2018 that she re-joined the cast as Tyrone's long-lost grandmother.
Some fans may best know Maureen for her time in advertising - sort of. In 1987, she was cast as the character "Beatrice Bellman" (Beatie/BT), a Jewish grandmother in a series of television commercials for British Telecom. She happily chatted on the phone to her grandson Anthony who has just failed all of his exams, except pottery and sociology. “He gets an ology and he says he's failed. You get an ology and you’re a scientist,” Beattie told him reassuringly.
And in June last year, Corrie was praised for taking viewers 'back to the 80s' as Maureen clearly revelled in saying 'ology' again as Jim Fizz the 'mixologist extraordinaire' made an entrance at the Rovers Return in an attempt to charm the ladies. When Jim, played by comedian Smug Roberts, introduced himself, Evelyn asked: "You're a what?" And when landlady Jenny Connor told her "he mixes cocktails" she replied "he says he's got an ology."
The actress has also appeared on the Celebrity Gogglebox sofa alongside pal Gyles Brandreth in 2020. However, she admits she walked away from the series after claiming several of her comments had been edited out of the final programme. Speaking to Radio Times, she said: "I went in imagining that they wanted me for my wit and my brain. Of course, they just want to show you willies and for you to be shocked.
Away from her life on stage and screen, Maureen has wo children, writers Amy and Adam Rosenthal. She was married to dramatist Jack Rosenthal from 1974 until his death in 2004, and has had a number of roles in his works. He had penned over 130 episodes of Coronation Street during the early days of the ITV soap.
She later met retired computer expert Guido Castro, an Egyptian Jew, who was her partner from 2008 until his death in January 2021 after contracting Covid. Speaking to the Daily Mail, Maureen said she didn't know when the 84-year-old, who had a form of Parkinson’s disease contracted the virus and said: "I said to Guido: 'It's time to go, you've got to let go,' and I think for once in his life he actually did what I told him."
She also told the publication: "I should have been wiser about Guido and not let that happen in the way it did. To my dying day I’ll be saying that I shouldn’t have carried on working when Guido was ill... Was I a good wife? No, because I was always putting my work first. I was going off to Manchester to do Corrie when Guido was getting old and on his own and he’d had a fall. What was I doing, going backwards and forwards on a train?"
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