Stoic star tormented by illness
PLAYING Elizabeth Bellamy, the headstrong daughter of Richard and Lady Marjorie in 1970s period drama Upstairs Downstairs, helped Nicola Pagett secure a brilliant stage and film career, which was sadly affected by mental illness.
With piercing blue eyes and a fixed stare, she had no difficulty gaining the attention of audiences but the strain of performing took its toll on her health.
Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Pagett wrote movingly and courageously of her battle to find a sense of calm in her 1997 autobiography Diamonds Behind My Eyes, which gave people a clearer understanding of her erratic behaviour.
She grew to understand her illness and accepted it would involve periods of psychosis, and feeling “strange”, with stoicism.
Born Nicola Mary Pagett Scott in Cairo in the last year of the Second World War, her father Herbert was an oil executive with Shell, which meant constantly moving from country to country.
Although her mother Barbara did her best to give her daughter a settled childhood, she may have
BORN JUNE 15, 1945
– DIED MARCH 3, 2021, AGED 75
struggled coping with life Cyprus, Hong Kong and Japan.
From the age of 12, she attended Beehive boarding school in Bexhill, East Sussex, where she suffered homesickness but found acting an enjoyable escape.
She spurned the chance to attend an elite finishing school in Switzerland on the grounds she didn’t want to be “finished off” and applied instead to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.
She chose the name Pagett while appearing in several productions with the Worthing Repertory Company. By 1968 she’d made it to theWest End.
She was praised for her portrayal of a Lolita character in A Boston Story and met actor and playwright Graham Swannell. They married and had a daughter, Eve.
Pagett’s performance in Upstairs in
Downstairs helped her to win the role of Anna Karenina in a 1977 television version of the Leo Tolstoy classic.
She proved to have a lighter touch when she starred alongside David Jason in 1989 award-winning comedy drama A Bit Of A Do.
While appearing at the National Theatre in Joe Orton’s What The
Butler Saw in 1995, Pagett had a breakdown which triggered an obsession with Tony Blair’s press secretary Alastair Campbell.
Referring to him as The Stranger, she signed herself off as Moi in long, rambling love letters.
Pagett died three weeks after being diagnosed with a brain tumour. She is survived by Eve.