Moira Redmond

The actor Moira Redmond, who has died of a heart attack at the age of 77, was a redhead of beauty and vivacity who never quite achieved stardom. She popped up in guest roles in almost every popular television crime series of the late 20th century, from No Hiding Place and Dixon of Dock Green to The Sweeney, from The Avengers and Danger Man to The Return of the Saint, but seldom more than once in each. The one title she graced three times was the B-movies series, the Edgar Wallace Mysteries, of the early 1960s.

On the loftier slopes of television drama she created several important parts, notably that of Leonie, the hero's faithless wife, in David Mercer's extraordinary 1962 BBC comedy of madness, A Suitable Case for Treatment, sharing the honours with Ian Hendry, Jack May, Anna Wing, Jane Merrow and Guy the Gorilla, whose scenes the director Don Taylor pre-filmed at the London Zoo. In line with the impersonation of historical figures which was increasingly required of actors at that time, she took on Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland, in The First Churchills (BBC, 1969) and in ATV's 1975 series Edward VII the role of that gamey old monarch's mistress, Alice Keppel.

Her quintessential cinema role was, perhaps, in one of the seven "Doctor" films spun from the original Doctor in the House yarn by Richard Gordon. Hers was Doctor in Love (1960), with Michael Craig succeeding Dirk Bogarde in the leading role. In the theatre she was a memorable Hermione in Frank Dunlop's production of The Winter's Tale at the 1966 Edinburgh festival, had roles in a couple of Alan Ayckbourn's popular comedies and enjoyed West End success with Flint in the 1970s.

Redmond was born in Bognor Regis, Sussex. Her mother was the actor Molly Redmond, her father a stage manager. The couple separated, and although they later came together again, Moira grew up as the child of a broken home looked after by an aunt or grandmother. After some dodgy teenage years she became a Windmill girl, joining that surprisingly respectable sorority lately featured in the film Mrs Henderson Presents. In the 1950s she married, and with her husband migrated to Australia. The marriage failed.

She returned to Britain in 1957 and applied herself to the theatre, gaining a good start by being chosen to understudy Vivien Leigh, as well as occupy a regular smaller part, in the European tour and London run of Laurence Olivier's production of Shakespeare's then rarely performed Titus Andronicus. She gained further experience with repertory companies and was at Leatherhead when, in 1962, an actors' strike stopped all drama production on ITV, and the esteemed Herbert Wise, then under contract to ATV, was suddenly available to direct a dramatisation of Vanity Fair. He cast Redmond as Becky. They fell for each other and married in 1963.

Again, her marriage did not last. They split in 1970, although Wise continued to employ her. Her Imogen in his 1972 BBC Play of the Month production of Trelawny of the Wells was the best thing she did, he reckoned. Then, in 1976, she played Domitia in the famous 13-part serialisation of I, Claudius; he directed, again for the BBC, giving that mother-in-law figure a nice comic slant.

She continued to find work, mostly on television, well into the 1990s. Her final appearance seems to have been in a Catherine Cookson story, The Wingless Bird, in 1997. By then she was beginning to suffer the senile dementia that would increasingly cloud her final years. She had no children.

· Moira Redmond, actor, born July 14 1928; died March 16 2006

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