Jean Marsh, Emmy-Winning Doctor Who Vet and Willow Star, Dies at 90

Jean Marsh, the Emmy-winning star of Upstairs, Downstairs, has passed away.

Per the New York Times, Marsh died at her London home on Sunday. According to her close friend, filmmaker Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Marsh’s death was attributed to complications from dementia. She was 90 years old.

Jean Lyndsay Torren Marsh was born on July 1, 1934. She attended theater school before making her on-screen debut at the age of 18 in the 1952 TV movie The Infinite Shoeblack. She’s make her feature film debut the following year in 1953’s The Limping Man. By 1959, she relocated to the United States, picking up a role in the first season of The Twilight Zone as a robot companion created for a prisoner (played by Jack Warden) on an asteroid.

In the early 1970s, Marsh helped launch the TV series Upstairs, Downstairs. The show lasted from 1971 to 1975 in England and from 1974 to 1977 in the United States. Marsh played the role of Rose, a part that earned her an Emmy in 1975 for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. The show also won a Peabody Award with six additional Emmy nominations. 13 unaired episodes would later resurfaces in 1989, putting the series into the spotlight once again.

Marsh is also known for having multiple roles in early Doctor Who. Another one of her most popular roles was as an evil sorceress in 1988’s fantasy film Willow, while she also had a memorable turn as a secretary who blames the wrong man for her boss’s death in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1972 film Frenzy. Fans may also recognize Marsh for her role as an evil princess in 1985’s Return to Oz. Other film roles for Marsh include The Love Lottery, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, Cleopatra, Unearthly Stranger, Charlie Bubbles, Face of a Stranger, The Limbo Line, The Eagle Has Landed, The Changeling, and The Heavy. Some of her other many TV roles include The Saint, The Informer, Detective, Department S, UFO, The Befrienders, The Waltons, Hawaii Five-O, Tales from the Darkside, The Love Boat, 9 to 5, Murder, She Wrote, and Grantchester. She was seen (via archival footage) in the Willow sequel series that streamed on Disney+ in 2022. Marsh had no immediate survivors, as she was preceded in death by her older sister, Yvonne Marsh, who died in 2017. Previously, Marsh was married to actor Jon Pertwee in 1955 before the pair divorced in 1950. She never remarried but had notable romances with Kenneth Haigh and Michael Lindsay-Hogg. “I have had partners who I have thought about marrying and who have thought about marrying me,” Marsh once said in a 2010 interview with The Telegraph about her love life. “The problem was that we never thought it at the same time.”