Liz Smith, loveable Nana in The Royle Family, dies at 95
ACTRESS Liz Smith has died at the age of 95, it was revealed late last night.
The star, who was best known for her role as the ailing Nana in hit comedy The Royle Family, died on Christmas Eve.
Her death comes in the same year as her co-star Caroline Aherne, who died from lung cancer.
Ralf Little, who starred as her grandson Antony in the sitcom, led tributes on Twitter, writing: ‘Devastating to lose two members of my second family in one awful year. RIP Liz Smith.’
Born on December 11, 1921, Miss Smith was brought up by her widowed grandmother after her mother died when she was two and her father left when she was seven.
Miss Smith’s husband, sailor Jack Thomas whom she married in 1945, later walked out on her when their children were two and six.
She was determined to become an actress, after getting the taste for it as a child when her grandmother had taken her to acting classes. But work was hard to find, so she took any job she could, including delivering post. Her career took off late in life. After tiny walk-on roles and unpaid acting work, she won a part in Mike Leigh’s first feature film, Bleak Moments, at the age of 50.
‘I’d been rejected for so many years, but in the end I did it,’ she said in 2009.
Miss Smith became recognised for her comical facial expressions and her deadpan delivery in roles which included Letty Cropley in The Vicar of Dibley, alongside Dawn French.
She won a Bafta in 1985 for her performance in A Private Function and a Bronze Mask at the Taormina International Film Festival for the same performance.
Nana’s death in The Royle Family touched audiences in a performance that won Miss Smith best actress at the British Comedy Awards in 2007. She once told The Observer that awards ‘made up for half a life of nothing but rejection’. But even when she missed out to Ricky Gervais at the Baftas that year she managed to make a joke of it, saying she ‘thought they’d mispronounced her name’ when they announced him as the winner of the best comedy performance.
In 2009, Miss Smith was made an MBE for services to drama. Prince Charles told her the sofa-bound Royle Family characters were ‘nothing like my family’.
In 2009, she suffered three strokes in two days, forcing her to bow out of acting. ‘I was sure my end had come,’ she said at the time. ‘But still, I managed to tell my son Robert that I wanted to be buried in a wood without a coffin, so I’d have a green funeral.’