LONDON — British actress Wendy Richard, whose four-decade television career included roles as a sexy sitcom shop assistant and a working-class matriarch on the soap opera “EastEnders,” has died after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 65.
Richard died Thursday in a London clinic with husband John Burns by her side, said agent Kevin Francis.
Born Wendy Emerton, Richard was raised above the pub her parents ran in central London. She left school at 15 and worked at the Fortnum and Mason department store before studying drama.
She had parts in several of the cheap and cheerful “Carry On” film comedies, and in TV shows including “Up Pompeii!” and “The Likely Lads.” She became famous as Miss Brahms, a staff member of the fictional Grace Brothers department store, in the 1970s sitcom “Are You Being Served?”
Richard was known to millions around the world as put-upon matriarch Pauline Fowler in “EastEnders,” a long-running soap set in a close-knit east London neighborhood. Richard appeared in the show’s first episode in 1985 and stayed for 21 years.
Richard was diagnosed with cancer in the mid-1990s and again in 2002, and learned last year that the disease had returned and spread.
