Education
Royal Academy of Dramatic Artist
Actor stage actor television actor
Royal Academy of Dramatic Artist
She said in an interview that she was wounded by the inference that her "character was a gossip". The success of the soap had made her a household name in Britain. Furthermore Stelfox had appeared in every soap opera over a fifty year period.
Born at Dukinfield, Cheshire, on 11 April 1941, Stelfox caught the acting bug early, despite suffering from bilateral amblyopia, leaving her short-sighted.
After the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art Stelfox started straight at the British Broadcasting Corporation in a play called The Case Before You in which she played a 15 year old arsonist - where the prompter did not respond to her long pauses. In December 1960, she appeared in her first episode of Coronation Street.
She would later play many different characters in the world-famous soap opera, including, in 1983, running a dating agency in which one of her customers was the entrance cue for Jack Duckworth. She was the first actress to play Hyacinth Bucket"s randy sister Rose in the first series of Keeping Up Appearances, but was later replaced by Mary Millar.
She appeared in several other well-known television series, including the successful Wicked Women, Making Out with Margi Clarke, Mrs Parkin in Heartbeat, - and Jean in Common as Muck, Juliet Bravo, Coronation Street, The Bill and Crossroads, and Inspector Morse, She played Jane Healy, Melanie Owen"s mother, in an episode of EastEnders.
She appeared in the short-lived series Albion Market.
Stelfox portrayed a stand-up comedienne in Stand Up Sweetie Pie, directed by June Brown, the stalwart of EastEnders, who must have come across each other on set. lieutenant premièred in 1993 at the Nottingham Playhouse, rather than in the West End.