How Africa
Hilary Heath has died aged 74 of coronavirus.
The British actress, who appeared in Witchfinder General and Wuthering Heights, died this week after contracting the deadly COVID-19.
Her godson Alex Williams confirmed the tragic news on Facebook.
“We lost my wonderful Godmother Hilary Heath to Covid-19 last week,” he wrote.
“Hilary had many careers, starting out as a screen and stage actress in the 1960s and 1970s, and then re-inventing herself as a producer in the 1990s, making films like Nil by Mouth (Gary Oldman) and An Awfully Big Adventure (Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman).
“Her most remarkable re-invention came in her mid-60s, when she won a master’s degree from Oxford in psychology and became an addiction counsellor, specialising in CBT.
“She worked at clinics all over the world, often for free, often with very deprived and distressed individuals, and she regarded this as her most valuable work by far.
“She was a force of nature, and I can’t bear it that she is no longer with us,” he added.
Hilary was best known for her acting work opposite Vincent Price, first in Witchfinder General in 1968, then again in The Oblong Box in 1969 and The Cry Of The Banshee in the following year.
She once gushed of her co-star: “I adored Vincent…I played his mistress, his daughter and his wife. And he said, ‘if you ever play my mother, I’ll marry you’.”
Hilary also appeared in multiple TV shows, including roles on The Avengers, The Prisoners, Hadleigh, Van der Valk and Space: 1999.
She was known for her stagecraft too, wowing audiences in The Importance Of Being Earnest, Arms And The Man, and Whose Life Is It Anyway?.
Hilary leaves behind her two children, Laura and Daniel, as well as her ex-husband Duncan Heath.
