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Sylvia Syms OBE was born on 6th January 1934 in London. She was educated at RADA, on whose council she has served. She started as a starlet. In her second film My Teenage Daughter (1954), she played Anna Neagle's "problem"
daughter, and by 1960 had worked with Flora Robson, Orson Welles, Stanley Holloway, Lilli Palmer and William Holden - and made the film Ice-Cold in Alex (1958).

Also in 1958, she appeared in the English civil war story The Moonraker with George Baker her male lead. Syms played Tony Hancock's wife in The Punch and Judy Man (1962). Other comedies followed, such as The Big Job (1965) with Hancock's former co-star Sid James, but it was for drama that she won acclaim, including The Tamarind Seed (1974) with Julie Andrews and Omar Sharif, for which she was nominated for a British Film Academy award. My Good Woman (1972) was a husband-and-wife television comedy series which ran until 1974 with Leslie Crowther. At the same time, she was one of two team captains on the BBC's weekly "Movie Quiz", hosted by Robin Ray.

In 2006, she co-starred as Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in Stephen Frears' The Queen, alongside Oscar-winner Dame Helen Mirren. She also appeared in The Poseidon Adventure, making herself known to US audiences. Sylvia was made an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours in June 2007.

Find out more about Sylvia Syms at her website or on IMDB.