Suzan Farmer

Suzan Maxine Farmer (16 June 1942 – 17 September 2017) was an English film and television actress. She was regularly cast in movies produced by Hammer Films.

Early life The daughter of David Farmer, a trader in metals, and Eleanor (née Best), she was born in Maidstone, Kent, although the family later moved to Bray in Berkshire, near the location of Bray Studios, later used by Hammer. Her younger brother is the Baron Farmer, the city financier and a Conservative life peer. Their parents were alcoholics, as her brother related in his maiden speech in the House of Lords in 2014, saying the two children "experienced the poverty, neglect and shame that are such potent drivers of social exclusion". David Farmer's company was liquidated and he died before his elder child was seven. Suzan Farmer trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

Career Suzan Farmer had lead roles in several Hammer swashbuckling and horror films of the 1960s. The first of these was The Scarlet Blade (US: The Crimson Blade, 1963), an English Civil War tale with Lionel Jeffries and Oliver Reed, while The Devil-Ship Pirates (1964), concerned a ship allied with the Spanish Armada and was the first of her three films with Christopher Lee in the lead. Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966) and Rasputin, the Mad Monk (1966) were made back-to back using the same sets and an overlapping cast. In the Dracula film, she was targeted by Lee's vampire, but fought him off sending him to a cold, watery end assisted by Francis Matthews, who played her husband, and also her brother in Rasputin. The thriller Persecution (1974), with Ralph Bates as her husband, was a failure both critically and at the box-office. Other films include the war drama 633 Squadron (1964) as an RAF driver, plus the comedy Doctor in Clover (1966).

A regular performer in British television series, Farmer appeared in an episode of the Patrick McGoohan series Danger Man ("No Marks for Servility", 1964) and also featured in other ITC series in the 1960s and 70s, including UFO ("Survival", 1971), Man in a Suitcase, The Persuaders!, and in four episodes of The Saint playing four different characters. She appeared in a BBC television adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot (1966) and played Sally Carstairs in their version of Edmund Crispin's detective novel The Moving Toyshop (1964).

Other television appearances were in the 1968 series The Caesars (1968), an episode of the BBC science fiction anthology series Out of the Unknown (1969), an episode of the ATV series Thriller ("Death in Deep Water", 1975) and in the BBC's science fiction series Blake's 7 ("Deliverance", 1978). For a month in 1978, Farmer was a cast member of Coronation Street playing a divorced chiropodist who treated Albert Tatlock, and briefly went out with Ken Barlow.

Selected filmography The Supreme Secret (1958) – Tess The Dawn Killer (1959) – Cathy Hawkes The Wild and the Willing (1962) – Susan (uncredited) Wings of Mystery (1963) – Worker at English Steel Corporation Ltd. (uncredited) 80,000 Suspects (1963) – Carole (uncredited) The Scarlet Blade (1963) – Constance Beverley The Devil-Ship Pirates (1964) – Angela Smeeton 633 Squadron (1964) – WAAF Sgt. Mary Blake / Bissell Danger Man (1964) Episode No Marks for Servility - Helen Die, Monster, Die! (1965) – Susan Witley Sherlock Holmes (1965) – Episode "The Beryl Coronet" - Mary Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966) – Diana Kent Doctor in Clover (1966) – Nurse Holliday Rasputin, the Mad Monk (1966) – Vanessa Where the Bullets Fly (1966) – Caron The Saint (1966) - Episode (S5,E6) "The Convenient Monster" as Ann Clanraith Man in a Suitcase (1967) - Episode "Brainwash" - Judy UFO (1970) - Episode "Survival" - Tina Duval The Persuaders! (1971) - Episode "That's Me Over There" - Ann Summers Persecution (1974) – Janie Masters Dixon of Dock Green (1976) - Episode "Vagrant" - Margaret Spurling Coronation Street (1978) – 9 Episodes - Sally Robson Blake's 7 (1978) – Episode "Deliverance" - Meegat