Susan Fleetwood


Susan Maureen Fleetwood was a British actress. Recognised for the performances on British stage and small screen, she was known for her work on the television series Chandler & Co and The Buddha of Suburbia.

Early life and education

Fleetwood was born in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland, the daughter of Bridget Maureen and John Joseph Kells Fleetwood, an RAF officer. She was the elder sister of musician and actor Mick Fleetwood, drummer with rock band Fleetwood Mac. The service family was stationed in Egypt in the years before the Suez Crisis and, afterwards, in Norway where John Fleetwood received a NATO appointment and where Susan received her first role as the Old Testament Joseph in a school play. On her return to the UK, she was encouraged to take up drama by a nun at a convent school, winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the age of sixteen.

Acting career

Stage

After training with RADA, where a student production won Fleetwood the Bancroft gold medal, in 1964 she joined the company of the Liverpool Everyman theatre, where her fellow student Terry Hands had been appointed director. When Hands moved to the RSC in 1967, she followed. In 1968 at Stratford she gave two commanding performances: in the relatively unpromising part of Cassandra in Troilus and Cressida and as Regan in Lear. In 1969, under the direction of Hands, she movingly doubled the parts Thaisa and Marina in Pericles.
In 1974, she played Imogen in John Barton's production of Cymbeline. Many principal roles followed, until in 1977 the former RSC director Peter Hall persuaded her to join him in the National Theatre company where, in addition to playing Ophelia to Albert Finney's Hamlet, she was offered parts from a wider repertory of plays. In the early 1980s she appeared in seasons with both companies, including a memorable Rosalind in As You Like It. Her last season with the RSC was 1990–91.

Personal life and death

Fleetwood's partner at the time of her death was a British actor and theatre and screen director Sebastian Graham Jones.
After suffering from ovarian cancer for a decade, Fleetwood died in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England on 29 September 1995, aged 51.

Selected filmography