Beloved British actress Jean Marsh, star of show ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’, dies aged 90

British actress Jean Marsh, best known for her role as Rose Buck in the series Upstairs, Downstairs, has died aged 90. 

Marsh’s friend, director Sir Michael Lindsay-Hogg, said in a statement to the PA news agency that the actress “died peacefully in bed looked after by one of her very loving carers”. 

“She was as wise and funny as anyone I ever met, as well as being very pretty and kind, and talented as both an actress and writer,” he added. “An instinctively empathetic person who was loved by everyone who met her. We spoke on the phone almost every day for the past 40 years.”

Marsh won an Emmy for outstanding lead actress in a limited series in 1976 for Upstairs, Downstairs (1971 – 1975) – a series which depicted the life of the servants (“downstairs”) and their masters, the family (“upstairs”) between the years 1903 and 1930, showing the slow decline of the British aristocracy during the Edwardian period, the First World War and the Roaring Twenties.

Marsh co-created the series with Dame Eileen Atkins, a show which is said to have partly inspired the hugely popular Downton Abbey series.

Upstairs, Downstairs was later revived and reimagined in 2010, and Marsh became the only original cast member to return. 

Born on 1 July 1934 in Stoke Newington, north London, Marsh took dance and mime classes as therapy for an illness at a young age. She made her West End debut in The Land Of The Christmas Stockings at The Duke of York’s Theatre when she was just 12 years old.  

Marsh starred in films like Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972), the famous British war sinema The Eagle Has Landed (1976), the Val Kilmer-starring adventure sinema Willow (1988).

She appeared in iconic shows such as The Twilight Zone, Danger Man, Hawaii Five-O and Murder, She Wrote, and is known to many sci-fi fans as Sara Kingdom, a companion of the First Doctor in Doctor Who.

She was briefly married to actor Jon Pertwee, the third incarnation of the Doctor.

In 2012, she was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) for services to drama.