Mary Kerridge

Mary Antoinette Kerridge (3 April 1914 – 22 July 1999) was an English actress and theatre director best known for co‑running the historic Theatre Royal, Windsor with her husband John Counsell. Born in Islington, London to Ernest Kerridge and Antoinette Fick, she attended Highbury Hill School before moving with her family to Esher, Surrey, where she completed her secondary education at Wimbledon High School. At the age of eighteen she earned a London University Higher Certificate in English, French, Modern History and German, and later pursued one year of Intermediate Arts at University College London. Before finding her vocation onstage she worked as a secretary, model and receptionist, experiences that sharpened the poise she would later bring to the footlights.

Her professional debut came in 1937 with Edgar Wallace’s The Squeaker on the West End, and she quickly established herself in repertory companies across Margate, Southsea and Bath. During the Second World War she toured with Donald Wolfitt’s travelling Shakespearean troupe, performing classic roles that foreshadowed her later successes at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, where she was cast as Rosalind in As You Like It and Imogen in Cymbeline under the direction of the theatre’s founder. After the war she appeared in numerous West End productions under her husband’s direction, notably in Tyrone Guthrie’s Top of the Ladder (1950). In film, Kerridge portrayed Queen Elizabeth in Laurence Olivier’s 1955 adaptation of Richard III, a role she later revived on stage at the Old Vic in 1962 opposite Paul Daneman. The couple’s stewardship of the Theatre Royal extended from the 1930s into the 1980s, making Windsor a vibrant hub for repertory theatre. Married in 1939, she bore twin daughters, one of whom, Elizabeth Counsell, followed her mother into acting. Mary Kerridge died in Windsor on 22 July 1999 at the age of 85 and was laid to rest in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, the same sanctuary that houses the monument of Elizabeth Woodville, the historic queen she once embodied on screen.