The_Guardian_-_2016-12-29

camps.
Liz Smith, The Royle Family actor, has died
aged 95
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But Smith’s experience with improvisational theatre was to prove an advantage. For Bleak Moments
in 1971, Leigh could find the children he wanted but not the eccentric mother, because it was difficult
to find actors used to improvisation. Smith, who rarely gave media interviews, once told of how she
was selling toys in Hamley’s at Christmas when Leigh told her he needed a middle-aged woman to do
improvisations. Smith was cast as a woman who could not leave her bed, so she stayed in bed for the
six weeks of rehearsals and shooting. She later said that Bleak Moments, which was Leigh’s first
film, “changed my life” and cued up an exhaustive list of TV credits.
Liz Smith in 1984. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images
Leigh was so satisfied with Smith that he cast her again in his first television play, Hard Labour, this
time as a charwoman. She scrubbed the floors of the Territorial Army hall in which rehearsals took
place until her stockings were full of holes and she was satisfied that she knew what a charwoman
really felt like.
Smith found her first agent in 1973 and began to work steadily, mostly for television, from Dickens to
The Sweeney. By the 1980s she was an established face who did not lack work. Her films included
Lindsay Anderson’s Britannia Hospital (1982) and Malcolm Mowbray’s A Private Function (1984),
for which she won the Bafta award for best supporting actress.