Felicity Kendal

Felicity Ann Kendal CBE (born September 25, 1946 in Olton, Warwickshire) is an English actress, probably best known for her role as Barbara Good in The Good Life (known as Good Neighbors in the United States). She was made a CBE in 1995.
==Family==
She is the younger sister of Jennifer Kendal and the daughter of Geoffrey and Laura Kendal; her father was an English actor manager who made his living leading a repertory company on tours of India after the Second World War. They performed Shakespeare to audiences consisting mostly of schoolchildren. Her father had adopted his birthplace of Kendal, Westmorland as his stage name, his original surname being Bragg. 
Kendal was educated at six convents in India.
==Career==
Kendal made her stage debut aged 9 months, when she was carried on stage as a changeling boy in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Later she started her career proper at the age of nineteen and starred in the Merchant Ivory film, Shakespeare Wallah (1965), loosely based on her family's real-life experience. On her return to Britain, she found that her film appearance was not a passport to success, and her struggle to build an acting career was long and difficult, partly because of her unusual upbringing. 
Her most recent work is the ITV murder mystery series Rosemary & Thyme, in which she plays a gardener, Rosemary Boxer, who, together with friend, colleague and ex-policewoman Laura Thyme (Pam Ferris), solve mysteries near their various workplaces as landscape gardeners.
==Personal life==
Kendal is 152 cm (5 ft) tall and has been married twice. Her first marriage was to Drewe Henley between 1968 and 1979 and the second was to Michael Rudman from 1983 to 1990. She converted to Judaism at the time of her second marriage. She has a child by each of her ex-husbands. In 1991 Tom Stoppard left his wife to start a relationship with Kendal. The two are no longer intimate.
==External links==
* 
*Interview in The Daily Telegraph.
Category:Actresses