she met a young director named Mike Leigh for the first time. During her final year at East-15, she made her professional stage debut playing Sandie in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" at Lincoln's Theatre Royal. Thereafter, she gained further stage experience, including seasons at the Liverpool Everyman and Bolton Octagon Theatre. In 1973, she married Mike Leigh , leading to a creative partnership which produced some of Britain's most important theatre, TV and films -- as well as two sons: Toby and Leo. The most famous collaboration with Mike Leigh was when she played Beverly in Abigail's Party, first in a theatre production in 1977 for which she won the London Evening Standard Theatre Award and the Plays and Players Award for Best Actress, and then in the definitive TV version the same year. So embedded in the British consciousness is this portrayal of the comedy of social aspiration that when she recreated the role at the National Theatre in 1999 in an abridged performance, the audience stood and cheered. Other film work includes A Private Function, Shirley Valentine, Wilt, The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen, and Mike Leigh's critically acclaimed films Topsy Turvy, Secrets and Lies, and Life Is Sweet, for which she won the US National Society of Film Critics Award. Alison has had a regular presence on television since the early 1970s when she featured in Z Cars. Her many credits include the afore-mentioned Pride and Prejudice, Nuts in May, Karaoke, Fat Friends, for which she