Anna Wing
Encyclopedia
Anna Eva Lydia Catherine Wing, MBE
(born 30 October 1914) is an English actress. She has had a long career in television
and theatre
.
, London
, and started out as an artist
's model and later, during the Second World War, worked in East End
hospital
s. At 30, she married the actor Peter Davey, by whom she had a son, actor
-director Mark Wing-Davey
, but the marriage ended in divorce after three years. Her five years as the partner of Philip O'Connor
, a surrealist writer and contemporary of Stephen Spender
and Laurie Lee
, saw her spend some time as a nursery teacher in West London. She had a second son by Philip, Jon O'Connor, who also taught and currently works in education management and consultancy.
She attended the funeral of her EastEnders
onscreen daughter Wendy Richard
on 9 March 2009. She is a member of the Religious Society of Friends
.
on EastEnders
from the show's inception in February 1985, until the character was killed off in July 1988. She quit her role in the hit show as she was unhappy with the direction it was going, but has since reflected that it may not have been the right decision.
An earlier soap appearance of hers was in Market in Honey Lane
for ATV in the late 1960s. She also had a role in the Doctor Who
serial "Kinda"
in 1982. Other television credits include roles in Dixon of Dock Green
, Z-Cars
, Play for Today
and The Sweeney
.
Since leaving EastEnders, Wing has worked on stage, playing the medium
, Madame Arcati, in Noel Coward
's comedy Blithe Spirit
. She has also had numerous television roles, including parts in Casualty
, Doctors, French and Saunders
, The Bill
, as well as adding her vocal talents to the animated series Fungus the Bogeyman
. Her film credits include The Calcium Kid
with Orlando Bloom
and Tooth
(in which she played an ancient fairy), both in 2004.
In May 2005 she attended the British Soap Awards
, where she presented June Brown
with a life-time achievement award for her portrayal of Dot Branning
in EastEnders. In 2005, Wing formed part of the cast of the short film Ex Memoria, directed by Josh Appignanesi and produced by Oscar-winning producer Mia Bays. The short film tells of a woman's struggle with Alzheimer's Disease
. Ex Memoria was nominated for a British Independent Film Award for Best Short in 2006. She plays Grandma in the 2007 film Son of Rambow
.
In 2009, aged 94, she worked on a short film, Numbers Up, from Guildhall Pictures which will be doing the festival circuit later in the year. The same year Wing was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2009 Birthday Honours for her services to drama and charity.
.
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(born 30 October 1914) is an English actress. She has had a long career in television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
and theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
.
Personal life
Wing was born in HackneyMetropolitan Borough of Hackney
The Metropolitan Borough of Hackney was a Metropolitan borough of the County of London from 1900 to 1965. Its area became part of the London Borough of Hackney.-Formation and boundaries:...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, and started out as an artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
's model and later, during the Second World War, worked in East End
East End of London
The East End of London, also known simply as the East End, is the area of London, England, United Kingdom, east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames. Although not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries, the River Lea can be considered another boundary...
hospital
Hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....
s. At 30, she married the actor Peter Davey, by whom she had a son, actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
-director Mark Wing-Davey
Mark Wing-Davey
Mark Wing-Davey is a British actor and director.-Early life and career:The son of actor and actress Peter Davey and Anna Wing, Wing-Davey went to school at Woolverstone Hall School, before studying at Cambridge University where he was a member of the Footlights from 1967 to 1970.He had a featured...
, but the marriage ended in divorce after three years. Her five years as the partner of Philip O'Connor
Philip O'Connor
Philip O'Connor was a British writer and surrealist poet, who also painted. He was one of the 'Wheatsheaf writers' of 1930s Fitzrovia...
, a surrealist writer and contemporary of Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...
and Laurie Lee
Laurie Lee
Laurence Edward Alan "Laurie" Lee, MBE was an English poet, novelist, and screenwriter, raised in the village of Slad, and went to Marling School, Gloucestershire. His most famous work was an autobiographical trilogy which consisted of Cider with Rosie , As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and...
, saw her spend some time as a nursery teacher in West London. She had a second son by Philip, Jon O'Connor, who also taught and currently works in education management and consultancy.
She attended the funeral of her EastEnders
EastEnders
EastEnders is a British television soap opera, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 19 February 1985 and continuing to today. EastEnders storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional London Borough of Walford in the East End...
onscreen daughter Wendy Richard
Wendy Richard
Wendy Richard, MBE was an English actress best known for playing Miss Brahms in Are You Being Served? and Pauline Fowler in EastEnders...
on 9 March 2009. She is a member of the Religious Society of Friends
Religious Society of Friends
The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
.
Career
Wing is best-known for portraying the Beale and Fowler family matriarch Lou BealeLou Beale
Louise Ada "Lou" Beale is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Anna Wing. The character is played by Karen Meagher in the 1988 EastEnders special, Civvy Street, set during the Second World War....
on EastEnders
EastEnders
EastEnders is a British television soap opera, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 19 February 1985 and continuing to today. EastEnders storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional London Borough of Walford in the East End...
from the show's inception in February 1985, until the character was killed off in July 1988. She quit her role in the hit show as she was unhappy with the direction it was going, but has since reflected that it may not have been the right decision.
An earlier soap appearance of hers was in Market in Honey Lane
Market in Honey Lane
Market in Honey Lane was an ATV television soap opera which was broadcast between 1967 and March 1969.This cockney drama set was in an East London street market and covered the traders and customers. It was created by Louis Marks. Initially shown weekly in September 1968, it became a twice weekly...
for ATV in the late 1960s. She also had a role in the Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
serial "Kinda"
Kinda (Doctor Who)
Kinda is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four twice-weekly parts from 1 February to 9 February 1982.-Synopsis:...
in 1982. Other television credits include roles in Dixon of Dock Green
Dixon of Dock Green
Dixon of Dock Green was a popular BBC television series that ran from 1955 to 1976, and later a radio series. Despite being a drama series, it was initially produced by the BBC's light entertainment department.-Overview:...
, Z-Cars
Z-Cars
Z-Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby in the outskirts of Liverpool in Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.-Origins:The series was developed by...
, Play for Today
Play for Today
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted...
and The Sweeney
The Sweeney
The Sweeney is a 1970s British television police drama focusing on two members of the Flying Squad, a branch of the Metropolitan Police specialising in tackling armed robbery and violent crime in London...
.
Since leaving EastEnders, Wing has worked on stage, playing the medium
Mediumship
Mediumship is described as a form of communication with spirits. It is a practice in religious beliefs such as Spiritualism, Spiritism, Espiritismo, Candomblé, Voodoo and Umbanda.- Concept :...
, Madame Arcati, in Noel Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
's comedy Blithe Spirit
Blithe Spirit (play)
Blithe Spirit is a comic play written by Noël Coward which takes its title from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "To a Skylark" . The play concerns socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant, Madame Arcati, to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to...
. She has also had numerous television roles, including parts in Casualty
Casualty (TV series)
Casualty, stylised as Casual+y, is a British weekly television show broadcast on BBC One, and the longest-running emergency medical drama television series in the world. Created by Jeremy Brock and Paul Unwin, it was first broadcast on 6 September 1986, and transmitted in the UK on BBC One. The...
, Doctors, French and Saunders
French and Saunders
French and Saunders is a British sketch comedy television show written by and starring comic duo Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. It is also the name by which the performers are known on the occasions when they appear elsewhere as a double act....
, The Bill
The Bill
The Bill is a police procedural television series that ran from October 1984 to August 2010. It focused on the lives and work of one shift of police officers, rather than on any particular aspect of police work...
, as well as adding her vocal talents to the animated series Fungus the Bogeyman
Fungus the Bogeyman
Fungus the Bogeyman is a children's graphic novel by British artist Raymond Briggs. It follows one day in the life of the titular character, a working class Bogeyman with the mundane job of scaring human beings.-Plot:...
. Her film credits include The Calcium Kid
The Calcium Kid
The Calcium Kid is a British mockumentary comedy film which was released in 2004. This film is presented in the style of a fictional documentary or a "Mockumentary". It stars Orlando Bloom as a milkman and amateur boxer. Billie Piper and Michael Peña are also featured...
with Orlando Bloom
Orlando Bloom
Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Bloom is an English actor. He had his break-through roles in 2001 as the elf-prince Legolas in The Lord of the Rings and starring in 2003 as blacksmith Will Turner in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series, and subsequently established himself as a lead in Hollywood...
and Tooth
Tooth
Teeth are small, calcified, whitish structures found in the jaws of many vertebrates that are used to break down food. Some animals, particularly carnivores, also use teeth for hunting or for defensive purposes. The roots of teeth are embedded in the Mandible bone or the Maxillary bone and are...
(in which she played an ancient fairy), both in 2004.
In May 2005 she attended the British Soap Awards
British Soap Awards
The British Soap Awards is an annual awards ceremony to honour the best of British soap operas.The first event took place in 1999 and takes place in May each year. Although it is an ITV production, the events were held at the BBC Television Centre, in London until 2010. The 2011 awards relocated to...
, where she presented June Brown
June Brown
June Muriel Brown, MBE is a British actress, best known for her role as the busy-body, chain-smoking gossip Dot Cotton in the long-running British soap opera EastEnders and for making other high profile television appearances on shows such as Doctor Who, Coronation Street, Minder, The Bill and...
with a life-time achievement award for her portrayal of Dot Branning
Dot Branning
Dorothy "Dot" Branning is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera, EastEnders, played by June Brown since 1985. In a special episode entitled EastEnders: Dot's Story a young Dot was played by Tallulah Pitt-Brown in flashbacks. Dot first appeared in EastEnders in July 1985 as the mother of...
in EastEnders. In 2005, Wing formed part of the cast of the short film Ex Memoria, directed by Josh Appignanesi and produced by Oscar-winning producer Mia Bays. The short film tells of a woman's struggle with Alzheimer's Disease
Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease also known in medical literature as Alzheimer disease is the most common form of dementia. There is no cure for the disease, which worsens as it progresses, and eventually leads to death...
. Ex Memoria was nominated for a British Independent Film Award for Best Short in 2006. She plays Grandma in the 2007 film Son of Rambow
Son of Rambow
Son of Rambow is a 2008 comedy-drama film written and directed by Garth Jennings. The film premiered January 22, 2007 at the Sundance Film Festival. It was later shown at the Newport Beach Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and Glasgow Film...
.
In 2009, aged 94, she worked on a short film, Numbers Up, from Guildhall Pictures which will be doing the festival circuit later in the year. The same year Wing was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2009 Birthday Honours for her services to drama and charity.
Affiliations
Wing supports the Campaign for Nuclear DisarmamentCampaign for Nuclear Disarmament
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an anti-nuclear organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...
.