Beloved actress Jean Marsh who co-created Upstairs, Downstairs dies aged 90 (2025)

Jean Marsh, the actress who was both the co-creator and Emmy-winning star of Upstairs, Downstairs in the 1970s, has died aged 90.

The iconic performer died on Sunday at her home in London.

Her close friend, the filmmakerMichael Lindsay-Hogg, said she died of complications with dementia.

The show ran from 1971 to 1975 in England and from 1974 to 1977 in the United States, ultimately earning seven Emmy awards and a Peabody award.

The show depicted the lives of the Bellamy family and the staff of servants who kept their Belgravia townhouse running smoothly in Edwardian England.

Marsh played the head parlor maid, a stern but lovable Cockney who became a fan favourite and earned her the the 1975 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.

Born as Lyndsay Torren Marsh on July 1, 1934, in London, the actress came from a working class background.

‘If you were very working class in those days, you weren’t going to think of a career in science,’ Marsh explained to The Guardian in 1972. She saw herself as having two options: ‘You either did a tap dance or you worked in Woolworth’s.’

Marsh also co-created the television series The House of Eliott in 1991 and appeared in films including Cleopatra in 1963, Frenzy in 1972, The Eagle Has Landed in 1976, The Changeling in 1980, Return to Oz in 1985, Willow in 1988, Fatherland in 1994, and Monarch in 2000.

She was also a beloved member of the Doctor Who universe, known for roles including, Joan of England in The Crusade, then as Sara Kingdom, a companion of the First Doctor, and later a villain opposite the Seventh Doctor.

Marsh first thought of the idea for Upstairs, Downstairs when she and her good friend, actress Eileen Atkins, were house-sitting at a rich friend’s house in the South of France.

After telling Atkins she wished she could live in such luxury more often, Atkins told her to write down her idea for a show about the contrast between high class and low class people living in one house. The series made its debut in 1971.

Marsh was briefly married to Jon Pertwee, the third Doctor Who, from 1955 to 1960.

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