Rona Anderson

RONA Anderson, who has died aged 87, was a Scottish stage, film and television actress. She was married to Scots actor Gordon Jackson and they worked together several times in their career, notably in Jackson's crime drama, The Professionals, in which she played the less-than-challenging role of his wife.

However, that's not to suggest at all Anderson's career was inextricably linked to her husband's success.

Edinburgh-born Anderson was determined on pursuing an acting career from an early age and trained at the Glover Turner-Robertson School in Edinburgh. Still a teenager, she made her first appearance on the stage at the Garrison Theatre in April 1945 in a production of Peg o' My Heart and received rave notices.

From 1945 until 1949, she joined the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, and worked alongside future stars such as Fulton Mackay, Duncan Macrae and Stanley Baxter. Baxter recalls Anderson was "a very fine actress", but "too beautiful".

"She was stunning," he recalls. "And she had this incredible porcelain-like face. But she was too beautiful for film. The camera likes angularity, to see the edges, and I think Rona's face was just too perfect."

Anderson did make it onto film, however, her first major appearance being the 1948 drama Sleeping Car to Trieste. In 1949 she landed a role in the low-budget Scottish romantic drama Floodtide in which she met rising young star, Gordon Jackson. The pair married two years later.

Anderson did have a potted film career, playing Alastair Sim's love interest Alice in the 1951 classic film adaptation of A Christmas Carol. In 1958, she appeared alongside Lee Patterson in Man with a Gun, and her last major film appearance was in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1969.

Interestingly, Anderson played chemistry teacher Miss Lockhart, who manages to create alchemy with music teacher Mr Lowther, whom she prises away from Jean Brodie, with Lowther played by Anderson's real-life partner, Gordon Jackson.

The actress was not too committed to the pursuit of career success, however. Anderson considered her greatest role was that of mum to her two sons, Roddy and Graham. And until Jackson's death from cancer in 1990 she lived an idyllic life with her family in their Hampstead home, alongside neighbours and friends such as Tom Conti, Pauline Collins and John Alderton.

That is not to say she was averse to taking on a meaty role, making episodic returns to television and the stage. Television work included paying a nun in 1964 drama The Human Jungle alongside Herbert Lom and the role of Mary in the sitcom Bachelor Father in 1970 and 1971.

She later appeared in long-running crime series The Professionals as Mrs George Cowley, the on-screen wife of Gordon Jackson. Stage work highlights included the role of Venus in a production of The Queen's Comedy at the 1950 Edinburgh Festival and the first production of Whose Life Is It Anyway? at the Mermaid Theatre in 1978. In 1981 she played Frances Shand Kydd in the Ray Cooney comedy Her Royal Highness at the Palace Theatre, London.

"Rona was a lovely lady," says Stanley Baxter. "She was an exceptional person. And Kenneth Williams, who didn't take to too many people, spent a great deal of time with Rona and her family. In fact he adored her and her sons, which tells you a great deal about the family. I recall fondly the dinner parties we enjoyed together. Rona had a great sense of humour, was great to be around, and she will be sadly missed."

She is survived by her two sons.

Brian Beacom