Stephanie Cole

Stephanie Cole, OBE (born Patricia Stephanie Cole;5 October 1941) is an English stage, television, radio and film actress, best known for high-profile television roles in shows such as Tenko, Open All Hours, Waiting for God, Keeping Mum, Doc Martin and, since 2011, as Sylvia Goodwin in ITV soap opera Coronation Street. --- Born in Solihull, Warwickshire. She trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School from 1958 to 1960 and went on to consolidate her acting skills in repertory theatres around the United Kingdom. She made her stage debut at the age of seventeen playing the eccentric, elderly medium Madame Arcati in Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit. At the age of 63 she returned to the same role when the play was revived at the West End's Savoy Theatre in 2004. One of her most recognised and popular roles was of Dr Beatrice Mason in the 1980s television series Tenko, a drama which chronicled the lives of British women in Singapore after the Japanese invasion and their consequent confinement in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. The series was explicit in its portrayal of the horrific conditions and brutality faced by the women during their imprisonment, and dealt with issues such as rape, stillbirth, lesbianism, suicide, abortion and euthanasia. Cole played the role of the stern, officious yet kindly doctor over three series and a one-off special between 1981 and 1985. --- Cole married fight director Henry Marshall in 1973. Marshall was one of the founders of the British Academy of Dramatic Combat and was a Master at Arms at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. They have a daughter Emma (born 1973). They divorced in 1986. In 1998 Cole married fellow actor Peter Birrel after meeting him again by chance, thirty years after they first appeared together in a production of Richard II at the Bristol Old Vic. She remained his wife until his death from cancer in 2004.