Roberta Taylor death: EastEnders and The Bill star dies aged 76

Roberta Taylor, identified for her roles in The Invoice and EastEnders, has died aged 76.

Taylor suffered from lung illness emphysema and died on 6 July after a fall two months in the past led to an an infection. Her situation subsequently worsened with a bout of pneumonia, reported The Guardian.

Taylor began out as a dental nurse, however took drama courses in her spare time till 1973, when a good friend recommended she attempt to get into drama college. Taylor auditioned and obtained into the Central college on the identical day as Peter Guinness, who ultimately grew to become her second husband.

Taylor labored on the Glasgow Residents Theatre from 1980 to 1992 and honed her craft working in a number of performs, together with Noel Coward’s Non-public Lives, Oscar Wilde’s An Preferrred Husband, and Bertolt Brecht’s Mom Braveness. She was additionally, throughout this era, solid in a stage adaptation of Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Issues Previous) titled A Waste of Time, which additionally starred Rupert Everett and Gary Oldman.

The actor began enjoying Irene Raymond on the BBC’s EastEnders in 1997, the matriarch of the Hills household. Over the three years she spent on the present, Irene had a number of romances, together with one with Gavin Richards’ Terry Raymond and her younger lodger Troy Harvey, performed by Jamie Jarvis.

She performed Irene until 2000, and on her exit, defined that the rigours of filming a cleaning soap meant she had too little time for herself.

“I used to be all the time considering, ‘When can I be taught my strains?’ I gave over a lot of my life to the present and if I used to be to hold on at such a tempo I’d must proceed to place my life on maintain,” she instructed The Mirror.

“I didn’t wish to do issues at half-cock. I had quite a lot of enjoyable enjoying Irene, and Gavin, who performs my display husband Terry, and I obtained on brilliantly.

“Irene was a sophisticated girl. I by no means knew what was going to occur subsequent, however that’s what life is like. We labored onerous at our characters. Individuals thought we have been comical however really there was quite a lot of sarcasm.”

open picture in gallery

She then went on to work on the ITV collection The Invoice, enjoying Inspector Gina Gold.

Taylor additionally appeared on tv exhibits like Casualty, Docs, Sharman, Holby Metropolis, Silent Witness, and Inspector Morse, and in movies like The Witches in 1990 and Tom & Viv in 1994.

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Her final main tv collection was Shakespeare & Hathaway in 2022.

Taylor revealed a memoir about her childhood, Too Many Moms, in 2005, and a novel known as The Reinvention of Ivy Brown in 2008.

Tributes poured in after information of her loss of life broke.

Actor Nicholas Pegg wrote on X: “Stunning, sensible Roberta Taylor. Adored by hundreds of thousands for her roles in The Invoice and EastEnders. Excellent in Shakespeare, Inspector Morse, and all factors in between. A mighty raconteur, a demon at Scrabble, and an expensive good friend. Ideas are along with her household and her beloved Pete.”

Kyri Zindilis, story producer on EastEnders, wrote: “Devastated to listen to this – I adored Irene Raymond. We’ve this image printed out and up on the wall within the Story Division, and it all the time makes me smile. RIP Roberta Taylor.”