Jacqueline Anne Stallybrass (4 December 1938 – 3 July 2021) was an English actress who trained at the Royal Academy of Music in London. The television roles for which she is best known are Jane Seymour in The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970) and Anne Onedin in The Onedin Line (1971–1972). In the 1990s, Stallybrass played Dr Kate Rowan's Aunt Eileen in Heartbeat (Season 3 episode 5 and Seasons 5–7).
Biography
Stallybrass was born in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, on 4 December 1938,[1] to Edward Lindsay Stallybrass (1905–1990) and Annie Isobel (née Peacock) Stallybrass (1911–1981), who married in 1933 in Hackney, London.[2] She was educated at St Bernard's Convent, Westcliff and spent three years training at the Royal Academy of Music, where she won the Drama Gold Medal. She began her professional acting career by spending several years in repertory, gaining experience in FolkestoneKent, with the Arthur Brough Players, before moving to Nottingham and then to Sheffield.[1]
Stallybrass married twice and was unable to have children. She described this as "something I have learnt to live with. I take great joy in my three godchildren and have kept in touch with all the 'television children' I have had.[1] She met her first husband Roger Rowland in Nottingham; the couple married in 1963, separated after nine years of marriage and later divorced. Peter Gilmore's second marriage broke up not long after and the friendship between the two Onedin Line actors gradually developed. In 1987, after 10 years together the couple married and remained together until Gilmore's death in February 2013.[3] They lived in Barnes, London, and owned a cottage, named Onedin House, in Dartmouth, which was used as a film location for scenes in The Onedin Line.