Known as the "Grand Dame of British Cinema", Syms was a major player in films from the mid-1950s until mid-1960s, usually in stiff-upper-lip English pictures, as opposed to kitchen sink realism dramas, before becoming more of a supporting actress in both film and television roles. On television, she was known for her recurring role as dressmaker Olive Woodhouse on the BBCsoap operaEastEnders. She was also a notable theatre player.[3]
When Syms was 12, her mother died from a brain tumour. At 16, she suffered a nervous breakdown and contemplated taking her own life until an intervention from her stepmother.[4] Syms was educated at convent schools before deciding to become an actress and attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1954. She later served on RADA's council.
Syms's career began in repertory theatre in Eastbourne and Bath.[6] She made her West End debut in The Apple Cart with Noël Coward.
Film career
Syms appeared in a TV play The Romantic Young Lady. This led to two offers, one to make a film for Herbert Wilcox, My Teenage Daughter, another to sign a long-term contract with Associated British. She accepted both. In My Teenage Daughter (1956), Syms played Anna Neagle's troubled daughter. The film was successful at the British box office.[3]
For Associated British she made No Time for Tears then appeared in The Birthday Present. Syms had the third lead in Woman in a Dressing Gown for director J. Lee Thompson which was very popular. She then made the English Civil War film, The Moonraker and the war film Ice Cold in Alex, also directed by Thompson. In early 1958 she made a third film for Thompson, No Trees in the Street.[3] She announced she would make her first screen comedy The Light Blue.[7] This became Bachelor of Hearts. In March 1959 she was voted Variety Club's Film Actress of 1958.[8]
In 1959, Syms appeared in the film Expresso Bongo as Maisie King, opposite Cliff Richard.[3] She played opposite Dirk Bogarde in the 1961 film Victim, as the wife of a barrister who is a closet homosexual. The film is thought to have broadened the debate that led to the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in private in the United Kingdom.[9]
Syms made Ferry to Hong Kong, The World of Suzie Wong and Conspiracy of Hearts. A May 1962 article in Variety called her the top female star in British films "with little competition, as yet".[10]
She played Tony Hancock's wife in The Punch and Judy Man. The film also featured her nephew, Nick Webb. In 1963 she ended her contract with Associated British which by then guaranteed her £10,000 a year but which she felt was too restrictive.[11] She appeared in East of Sudan. In 1965 she appeared on stage in Dual Marriageway.
Syms featured in the husband-and-wife TV comedy My Good Woman from 1972 to 1974[13] and on the weekly BBC programme Movie Quiz as one of two team captains.
For Stephen Frears's biopic The Queen (2006), Syms was cast as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.[3] She also appeared in The Poseidon Adventure (2005), an American TV film that was a loose remake of the 1972 feature film. Syms also took up producing and directing.
In 2009, she featured in the ITV drama series Collision. In 2010, she guest-starred as a patient in BBC One's drama series Casualty, having played a different character in an episode in 2007. Syms also appeared as another character in Casualty's sister series Holby City in 2003. From 2007 to 2010, she had a recurring role in BBC One's EastEnders, playing dressmaker Olive Woodhouse.[3] In 2010, Syms took part in the BBC's The Young Ones, a series in which six celebrities in their seventies and eighties attempt to overcome some of the problems of ageing by harking back to the 1970s.[17] From 2013 to 2019, Syms was the narrator of Talking Pictures, which aired on BBC Two.[3]
Syms had numerous theatre roles, including in productions of Much Ado About Nothing, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Antony and Cleopatra.[3]
Personal life
From 9 June 1956 to 1989, Syms was married to Alan Edney, whom she had dated since she was a teenager.[3] In 1961 they lost a baby daughter, Jessica.[18][19] Later that year Syms and her husband adopted a son, Benjamin Mark.[20] In October 1962 she gave birth to a daughter, Beatie Edney who is also an actress.[6][21] Syms and her husband divorced in 1989 when she discovered he had a mistress for several years and that they shared a two-year-old daughter.[22]
Her sister Joan married Norman Webb, the Cambridge-educated statistician who invented the Television Audience Measurement system, and was later a chief executive of Gallup.[23]
Syms was a longtime supporter of the Stars Foundation for Cerebral Palsy, serving on its board as an officer for 16 years until 2020, with singer Vera Lynn.[citation needed]
In the last year of her life, Syms lived at Denville Hall, a retirement home for actors in London. She died there on 27 January 2023, three weeks after her 89th birthday.[16][24]
Legacy
In the words of Filmink magazine:
I don’t think any actress in English speaking cinema of this era had such a variety of love interests as Sylvia Syms. It helped that she was beautiful, of course ... that she could act: it's hard to think of a bad Sylvia Syms performance – sometimes she was miscast, but never bad. She always brought a level of intelligence to her roles along with a sense of fun. And she was highly adept playing "smouldering hot lava of emotion and sensuality under an outwardly straight-laced and sensible facade" that made her – and this is meant with nothing but the greatest respect to the recently departed – sexy as hell.[25]
