Soft heart behind the TV villain
ACTRESS Cornelia Frances may have been born in Liverpool but it was in Australia that she became a household name. During her 60-year career the instantly-recognisable redhead appeared in numerous soap operas including The Young Doctors, Prisoner, Sons And Daughters and Home And Away. It’s for the latter, as Summer Bay’s scheming Morag Bellingham, the sister of shopkeeper Alf Stewart, that she will be best remembered.
But it didn’t matter which soap she starred in, Frances invariably always played a strong and often villainous, woman. “It has been a wonderful road and I’ve loved every minute of it,” she once said. “I’ve loved every soapie I’ve been on.”
Born in 1941 Frances studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.
Destined for stardom from a young age she started out by playing small roles in films directed by her uncle Michael Powell, including the 1960 thriller Peeping Tom and military drama The Queen’s Guards the following year.
She first moved to Australia in 1965 but returned to marry Michael Eastland in 1969. The pair, who had a son together named Lawrence, went on to divorce in the 1990s but continued to be good friends.
After permanently emigrating to Australia in 1970 Frances’ acting career skyrocketed her to fame. She first hosted the television show Tom’s TV Bingo before taking a lead role in the 1975 film The Box.
But it was when she landed her role in The Young Doctors playing the strict matron Grace Scott a year later that she became a huge star.
Carving out a successful career as an actress Frances continued to star in a handful of films, TV soap operas and stage performances including Prisoner in 1980 and Sons And Daughters in 1982 before landing her biggest role as Morag in 1988.
Her appearances on the show were sporadic, often being contracted for six months at a time, and Frances made no secret of the fact that she wanted to become a full-time actress on the soap opera.
She would often describe her on-off role as “unsettling” and made her last appearance on Home And Away in April 2017.
Despite being nominated six times for a Logie award, Australia’s highest television award, she never won but insisted she had no hard feelings as she enjoyed every role she played. As well as her acting roles Frances will also be remembered for staring contestants down as the host of Australia’s The Weakest Link, the game show that Anne Robinson presented in Britain.
In 2003 she published her autobiography And What Have You Done Lately?
However, unlike her stern TV persona – many fans believed she shared Morag’s temperament in real life – when off-screen Frances was a warm and kind-hearted person who dedicated much of her time to orangutan conservation in Borneo. In 2011 her son Lawrence came up with the one-liner “redheads for redheads”. The Orangutan Project loved the joke and made her an ambassador for the charity.
Frances, who was planning her comeback for Home and Away’s 30th anniversary later this year, was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2017. While she was being treated for a fractured hip it was discovered the cancer had spread.
She died at her home in Sydney, New South Wales and is survived by her son.