Celia Gregory | Television | The Guardian

Celia Gregory

In the 1970s Celia Gregory, who has died aged 58, appeared on the Sunday Times list of Britain's most promising actresses. During the ensuing 20 years, her talent and dedication carried her career from strength to strength.

She appeared on the West End stage with Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright and Frank Finlay in 1973 in Eduardo de Filippo's Saturday, Sunday, Monday, directed by Franco Zeffirelli. In 1978 she starred opposite Paul Scofield in Ronald Harwood's play A Family. On television, she appeared as Ruth Anderson in the 1976 BBC series Survivors and played opposite Sam Neill in Reilly: Ace of Spies in 1983.

Her copious TV work also included Hammer House of Horror, The Professionals, Bergerac, Tales of the Unexpected, Ruth Rendell Mysteries and The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, with Jeremy Brett in the title role. Her films included Agatha (1979), with Dustin Hoffman and Vanessa Redgrave, The Inside Man (1984), with Dennis Hopper, and Peter Greenaway's The Baby of Mâcon (1993), her last film role.

We first met Celia when we joined the Tyneside Theatre Company, Newcastle in 1973. For us, fresh from our respective drama schools, Celia seemed the "seasoned pro", having by then completed a season at Lancaster rep. When she walked into the room on our first day, all heads turned. Celia radiated beauty effortlessly, inside and out. Hers was a sensual beauty not unlike Ava Gardner's, with dancing eyes, and an earthy, naughty laugh.

She was born in London but her parents divorced and her mother remarried, to a German industrialist, so she grew up in Switzerland, Germany and Holland. She learned German, French, Portuguese and Italian. As well as her two sisters, she gained three stepbrothers who had been raised in Brazil. Their love of all things Latin inspired Celia's guitar-playing and wonderful singing.

She and her sisters were sent to boarding school at Moira House in Eastbourne, Sussex. Celia went to finishing school in Italy before training at Studio 68 drama school in London. Despite her privileged background, she loved the freedom of the actor's life and the company of creative people. She was equally comfortable dining at the Ivy or picnicking in the rain.

She seemed to us so exotic and such a woman of the world, with innate elegance and taste. She loved the fine things in life and always dressed with great flair, half jet-set and half Gypsy. Friends had to be careful not to admire something Celia was wearing because she would take it off there and then and hand it over. Her heart was huge and her generosity was boundless, qualities that suffused her acting roles.

She was not a technical actor; her brilliance was born out of raw intelligence, understanding of people and an appetite for life. She possessed that rare quality, stage presence. During our year in Newcastle, she played Masha in The Three Sisters with insight and experience beyond her 24 years, and her Gertrude to Jack Shepherd's Hamlet was maternal and passionate.

After marrying Keith Bender and having two children, Charles in 1984 and Peter in 1987, Celia continued to work occasionally until 1993, when she chose to devote more time to her family. Family meant everything to her. Christmas at her home followed the German tradition of being celebrated on Christmas Eve, and even if times were lean, she would lay a beautiful table with the family linen and silver, gather her loved ones around her and pamper everyone. The evening would usually end with her playing her guitar and belting out her beloved Brazilian songs.

She is survived by her sons, her sisters Leyla and Yvonne, and her brothers, Klaus, Uli and Andreas. Her marriage ended in divorce.

Jan Sargent writes ... From the very first time I worked with Celia, it was her ability to transform that impressed, from the plaintive, funny, innocent and complex Jo in A Taste of Honey, to the ravishing, passionate Masha in The Three Sisters, devouring Vershinin with a glance. She was incapable of false delivery and lived every part as if it were her last.

She became my muse as a director, and when I moved to TV, whether it was the mother of a lost child in the Ruth Rendell Mysteries, a sophisticated fraudster in Perfect Scoundrels or other parts in Casualty or Juliet Bravo, she was always my first choice. Her translucent beauty, loved by the camera, her grace on stage and her husky voice remain vivid, and the generosity she lavished on her friends was, like her talent, wholehearted and uncompromising.

· Celia Christine Gregory, actor, born September 23 1949; died September 8 2008

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaJulocG2vsRoaWloaGTApryOa21orJWhsre10qKmp2aSl7A%3D