Rosalie Crutchley

Rosalie Sylvia Crutchley (4 January 1920 – 28 July 1997) was a British actress. Trained at the Royal Academy of Music, she was perhaps best known for her television performances, but had a long and successful career in theatre and films, making her stage debut in 1932 and her screen debut in 1947. She trained at the Royal Academy of Music. She played Madame Defarge twice in adaptations of A Tale of Two Cities, in both the 1958 film and in the 1965 television serialisation of the same story.

Other roles included Mrs Sparsit in Hard Times (ITV, 1977) and Electra (1974). She also starred in the 1979 BBC TV production of Testament of Youth, playing the role of the Principal of Somerville College, Oxford. She was in the films Quo Vadis (1951), as Acte, the former mistress of the Emperor Nero (Peter Ustinov) and The Haunting (1963), as the sinister housekeeper Mrs Dudley.

Crutchley also appeared in film adaptations of two A.J. Cronin novels, The Spanish Gardener (1956) and Beyond This Place (1959) and played the flinty maiden aunt in the TV adaptation of Brendon Chase (1980–81). In the role, her less-than-good singing voice was used for intentionally comic effect in the song "I'm Only Thinking of Him".

Her final acting role was in the pilot episode of the TV detective series, Midsomer Murders, playing Lucy Bellringer.

Personal life She was married twice, firstly to actor Dan Cunningham in 1939 and secondly to actor Peter Ashmore in 1946. Both marriages ended in divorce. She had two children, one of whom is the physicist Jonathan Ashmore.

Crutchley died at The Harley Street Hospital in London in 1997 at the age of 77.

Filmography

Film

Television