Frances de la Tour Biography

Frances de la Tour trained at the Drama Centre in London in the 1960s before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company. Through 1971, her work there included the roles of Hoyden in The Relapse and Helena in Peter Brook's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. For the National Theatre, her credits include Brighton Beach Memoirs, Les Parents Terribles, the title role in St Joan and The Good Hope. She received a Variety Club Best Actress Award for Noel Coward's Fallen Angels.

Frances won a Tony Award for her performance as Mrs. Lintott in the multi award-winning play The History Boys, and was also nominated for a BAFTA in the 2006 screen version of the stage play. She has earned three Olivier Awards: in 1980 for Best Actress in Duet for One, for which she also won the Evening Standard Best Actress Award; in 1984 for Best Actress in a Revival for A Moon for the Misbegotten; and in 1992 for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for When She Danced.

Early television appearances include the 1970s sitcom Rising Damp, Duet for One, for which she received a BAFTA Best Actress nomination, the BBC's Waking the Dead, Poirot: Death on the Nile, Miss Marple: The Moving Finger, BBC's Sensitive Skin and the CBS-TV series 3 lbs.

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