Tipsy aunts, querulous matrons, fearsome matriarchs, plucky parents, condescending aristocrats, taciturn chaperones, tight-lipped nannies, crusty aunts, gossipy grandmas, suspicious wives, elderly gamblers, theatrical dames, snooty dowagers, nosy spinsters and rural snobs - Jean Anderson, who died on April 1st aged 93, had a way of giving to each a singular presence, vitality, dignity and truth.
Yet, as a character actor of her quality, she had had far fewer opportunities than a star or leading performer to establish herself in the imagination, especially in the kind of depth which the musically-trained actor liked to plumb.
In the late 1920s, it was hard for a serious-minded young actor who was not arrestingly pretty to get a training in the classics, which was the only way to get on without backstage influence.
Born on December 12th, 1907, in Eastbourne of a Scottish family, she grew up in Guildford. After training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, her first professional role was on a 50-week tour of Many Waters, alongside a fellow RADA student, Robert Morley.
After a stint in rep at Cambridge, where the director was Peter Powell, whom she later married, she landed the part of the mother in an Irish revival by the Gate Theatre Company, of Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! which visited the West End in 1936. When the company returned to Dublin, Jean Anderson joined it for three years as leading lady.
In the 1940s, she found herself working at London's Players Theatre Club, where so many other theatrical luminaries (notably Peter Ustinov) first got their footing in the theatre.
Whether in the West End, the National Theatre or the Gate, or with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Jean Anderson made her mark. In particular, she excelled as Mme Rosamunde in Les Liaisons Dangereuses for the RSC, in which she went to Broadway (1986).
Was there a likelier Charley's Aunt (for the same company) or a haughtier dowager in Travers's Corkers End or a funnier Dame Maud Gosport (looming but listing squiffily) in Rattigan's send-up of actor-managers, Harlequinade? They were typical examples of her familiar character work.
Her quiet authority, vocal poise and invisible technique saw her safely through countless parts on stage, screen and television. In the 1950s and 1960s she juggled with all three mediums simultaneously, lending her dependably distinctive gallery of cousins, aunts, mothers, nurses, policewomen, social workers, teachers and officials to the big screen in A Town Like Alice, Heart of a Child, Lucky Jim, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Spare the Rod, The Inspector, Half a Sixpence, Country Dance and The Lady Vanishes, as well as to the theatre and television.
It was the small screen, however, which seemed to bring out the best in her art; perhaps because it had more scope for the kind of kindly if sometimes curt characterisation to which she brought such a compelling restraint to favourites including the stoic mum in The Railway Children, the awful matriarch in The Brothers, the series about a road haulage company, and the eccentric old gambler in Trainer.
In its elegance, observation, timing and emotional insight, another gem was Molly Cowper, the ageing English social snob in Julian Mitchell's Survival of the Fittest. Herself as old as the 80year-old character, she brought out all the private suffering, loneliness, intransigence and maternal possessiveness of an old lady who refused to acknowledge reality.
Among scores of other "types" which she turned into individuals for the small screen were Jocelyn Holbrook in Tenko, the series about the experiences of European women interned by the Japanese, Mrs Fortescue in Keeping Up Appearances, Mrs Spencer Ewell in House of Elliot, Dr Goldrup in GBH, Lady Anne in Do Not Disturb, the dowager in Circles of Deceit, Belle in Campion, Great Aunt Anne in Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, Jo March in Little Women, and Frau Buddenbrook in Buddenbrooks. Last year, she returned to the Gate for a role in Beckett's Endgame.
Her marriage to Peter Powell ended in divorce. They had one daughter, Aude Powell.
Mary Jean Heriot Anderson: born 1907; died, April 2001