(This post was originally posted by Flaming Nora on the Coronation Street Blog January 2015, reposted to this blog with permission.)
It's so very sad, I don't quite know where to start today with this. Last night the news broke that Anne Kirkbride, who played Deirdre Barlow in Coronation Street for almost 45 years, has died after a short illness.
Today, as Anne Kirkbride's
Corrie friends and cast mates pay tribute to her, her obituary is in today's
Guardian online and reprinted here in full, with credit to them.
 |
| Anne Kirkbride, actor, born 21 June 1954; died 19 January 2015 |
"In the role of Deirdre Barlow in the ITV soap Coronation Street, the
actor Anne Kirkbride, who has died aged 60 after a short illness, found a
job for life – and was happy not to endure the stresses, lack of
routine and long periods out of work experienced by most actors. “I just
enjoy having something to do that’s good, something that’s interesting
and gives me a lot of scope,” she once told me in a rare interview. “I
wouldn’t be here if I wanted to perform Shakespeare. I never really
wanted to be an actress. This is a nine-to-five job. This is how I earn
my money. The thought of this show coming off or me losing my job fills
me with terror.”
A reluctant star, Kirkbride found fame and press attention difficult to
cope with. During an interview I conducted with her, she sometimes
failed to find the answers to questions and just shook her head and
waved her hands around in front of her face. Away from the Coronation
Street studios, Kirkbride was a million miles from her screen character.
She left behind Deirdre’s spectacles, pinnies and dresses, wore contact
lenses, shirts and jeans, and had the aura of a much younger person.
She made her debut in the television soap opera in 1972, with just three
lines as Deirdre Hunt, who was discovered drinking in a pub with Alan
Howard (Alan Browning) by his then wife, Elsie Tanner (Patricia
Phoenix). A year later, Kirkbride returned when Deirdre took her typing
skills to Len Fairclough’s builder’s yard, where she fell for his
business partner, Ray Langton. The two married in 1975 and had a
daughter, Tracy, but the marriage fell apart and the rest of Kirkbride’s
Coronation Street career was dominated by Deirdre’s rollercoaster
marriage to Ken Barlow (William Roache).
In 1983, two years after their wedding, Ken found out that Deirdre was
having an affair with Mike Baldwin (Johnny Briggs) and told her to
leave. The explosive storyline proved to be the serial’s biggest to that
date, with unprecedented press coverage. It caught the imagination of
the public to the extent that the electronic scoreboard at a midweek
Manchester United game informed 56,000 fans of the drama’s resolution:
“Deirdre and Ken united again!”
When Ken went astray himself, having an affair with Wendy Crozier,
Deirdre threw him out. The couple divorced and, in 1994, Deirdre married
a Moroccan waiter, Samir Rachid (Al Nedjari), but their happiness was
shortlived. He died in hospital after being attacked by thugs.
Kirkbride was then firmly at the centre of another storyline that
captured the nation’s imagination. When Deirdre was duped by Jon Lindsay
(Owen Aaronovitch), who falsely claimed to be an airline pilot, moved
into an expensive house with her and already had a wife and children,
she found herself framed for credit card and mortgage fraud, and was
sent to prison in 1998. She was released after several weeks when
another of the conman’s victims came forward. In real life, the
storyline had been mentioned by the prime minister and galvanised the
public to launch a “Free the Weatherfield One” campaign. Eventually,
Deirdre and Ken were reunited and remarried in 2005.
Kirkbride was born in Oldham, Lancashire, the daughter of Jack, a
cartoonist, and his wife, Edna. As a child, she showed a desire to
perform. Aged seven, she disappeared while on holiday in Wales and was
found giving a sermon, in a convincing Welsh accent, in an empty chapel.
She also learned the US comedian Spike Jones’s zany routines off by
heart. When the family moved to the Saddleworth village of Scouthead
when she was 11, Kirkbride joined the Saddleworth Junior Players, then
the Oldham Rep Junior Theatregoers’ Club.
On leaving school in 1970, she became an assistant stage manager with
Oldham repertory theatre and advanced to acting roles. In between
productions, she stage-managed a charity performance of Snow White. She
made her first screen appearance in a play made by the Manchester-based
Granada Television. In Another Sunday and Sweet F.A. (1972), written by
Jack Rosenthal and directed by Michael Apted, she was seen in hotpants
and a yellow knitted hat as a footballer’s girlfriend cheering on his
Sunday league team from the touchline. Happy with her theatre work and
resistant to change, she had had to be persuaded by her father to
audition for the part.
This led on to an audition for the pilot episode of a new Granada
series. Instead, she was offered the bit part of Deirdre Hunt in
Coronation Street. Confirmation that she had made it as a staple of the
soap came in 1984, when she, William Roache and Johnny Briggs jointly
won a Pye Television Award for their performances in the love triangle
storyline.
In 1993, a year after marrying the actor David Beckett – who had played
Dave Barton, Deirdre’s handyman boyfriend, in Coronation Street –
Kirkbride was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer affecting
her neck. She lost most of her hair as a result of chemotherapy,
returned to the Granada set with a wig after six months and was finally
given the all-clear in 1998.
However, as she put this illness behind her, Kirkbride was diagnosed
with clinical depression. “I’m too sensitive, everything hits me too
hard and affects me too much,” she said in a 2012 documentary, Deirdre
& Me: 40 Years on Coronation Street. “I realised that all my life
I’d probably suffered from a very mild form of depression.” She was
prescribed anti-depressants and immediately felt better.
Inheriting artistic talents from her father and photographer great-grandfather, Kirkbride enjoyed photography and painting, particularly of properties and landscapes around her Spanish holiday home. Exhibitions of her paintings were staged at galleries in Didsbury, Lancashire, where she lived.
Kirkbride is survived by her husband.
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