Frances de la Tour

Frances de la Tour (born 30 July 1944) is an English actress of French descent perhaps best known for her role as Miss Ruth Jones in the British sitcom Rising Damp, Mrs Lintott in The History Boys both on-stage and in the film, and as Madame Olympe Maxime in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1. For her work in the theatre, de la Tour has won a Tony Award and three Olivier Awards. --- De la Tour was born in Bovingdon, Hertfordshire, to Moyra (née Fessas) and Charles de la Tour. She was educated at London's Lycée Français and the Drama Centre London. On leaving drama school she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 1965 where she studied with Michel Saint-Denis. Over the next six years, she played many small roles with the RSC in a variety of plays, gradually building up to larger parts such as Hoyden in The Relapse and culminating in Peter Brook's acclaimed production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in which she played Helena as a comic "tour de force". In the 1970s, she worked steadily both on the stage and on television. Some of her notable appearances were Rosalind in As You Like It at the Playhouse, Oxford in 1975 and Isabella in The White Devil at the Old Vic in 1976. She enjoyed a collaboration with Stepney's Half Moon Theatre, appearing in the London première of Dario Fo's We Can't Pay? We Won't Pay (1978), Eleanor Marx's Landscape of Exile (1979), and in the title role of Hamlet (1980). Her many television appearances during the 1980's and 1990's include the 1980 miniseries Flickers alongside Bob Hoskins, the TV version of Duet for One, for which she received a BAFTA nomination, the series A Kind of Living (1988–89), Dennis Potter's Cold Lazarus (1996) and Tom Jones (1997). Of all her TV roles, however, she is best known for playing spinster Ruth Jones in the successful Yorkshire Television comedy Rising Damp, from 1974-78. de la Tour told Richard Webber, who penned a 2001 book about the series, that Ruth Jones "was an interesting character to play. We laughed a lot on set, but comedy is a serious business and Leonard took it particularly seriously, and rightly so. Comedy, which is so much down to timing, is exhausting work. But it was a happy time.". For reprising her Rising Damp role in the 1980 film version she won Best Actress at the Evening Standard Film Awards. --- She is the sister of actor and screenwriter Andy de la Tour, and was briefly married to playwright Tom Kempinski. She has a son and a daughter.