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1-11 of 11
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Jean Margaret Hodgkinson, known by the stage name Jean Alexander, was a British television actress. She was best known to British television viewers as Hilda Ogden in the soap opera Coronation Street (1960), a role she played from 1964 until 1987, and also as Auntie Wainwright in the long-running sitcom Last of the Summer Wine from 1988 to 2010. For her role in Coronation Street (1960), she won the 1985 Royal Television Society Award for Best Performance, and received a 1988 BAFTA TV Award nomination for Best Actress.
Alexander was born at 18 Rhiwlas Street Toxteth, Liverpool, in 1926, to Nell and Archie Hodgkinson; her father worked as an electrician and the family lived in a terraced house with no indoor lavatory. Alexander had an elder brother, Kenneth. She aspired to become an actress from an early age, and later said that she was inspired by variety acts she saw at the Pavilion theatre in her home city. She attended St Edmund's College for Girls in Princes Park, Toxteth and as a teenager, she joined an amateur theatre group and took elocution lessons.
Alexander spent five years as a library assistant in Liverpool before she began her acting career in 1949 at the Adelphi Guild Theatre in Macclesfield. She first appeared as Florrie in Sheppey by Somerset Maugham. She later worked in rep in Oldham, Stockport and York. Most of her parts were minor, and she also worked as a wardrobe mistress and stage manager. Her television debut is variously given as in the police series Z-Cars or in Deadline Midnight.
Alexander first appeared in Coronation Street in 1962 in a minor role as a landlady. Two years later, she returned to the programme as Hilda Ogden. She started playing the role on 8 July 1964, finally leaving on 25 December 1987. Ogden became highly popular with viewers and Alexander was often identified with her character.
The British League for Hilda Ogden was established in 1979 by Sir John Betjeman, Willis Hall, Russell Harty, Laurence Olivier and Michael Parkinson, among others. In 1984, hundreds of fans sent her condolence cards after the death of her on-screen husband Stan Ogden, played by Bernard Youens, who had died a few months before his character was killed off. In 1985 she received the Royal Television Society Award for her performance on Coronation Street. When she decided to leave the show in 1987, fans started "Save Hilda!" campaigns; however, many did not realise that she had made her own decision to depart. Her final scenes in the programme were aired on 25 December 1987, attracting nearly 27 million viewers, the highest number in the show's history.
In 2005 the UK TV Times poll voted her as the "Greatest Soap Opera Star of All Time".- Jean Alexander began her acting career while in high school in Rochester. Soon after graduation she joined Stanley Woolf's Civic Drama Guild of New York for a car-and-truck tour of "Junior Miss" (1945) and just months after WWII she was touring the South Pacific in "Petticoat Fever" with the USO. In New York, she trained as an actor with such luminaries as Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, and became a Lifetime Member of the Actors Studio in 1951.
Jean played on, off, and off-off Broadway. She was featured in several films, including the noir classic "The Mob (1951)". Her TV credits include most golden-era prime-time drama anthologies, including The United States Steel Hour (1953), The Philco Television Playhouse (1948), Kraft Theatre (1947), and Studio One (1948), as well as serials such as "Decoy (1957)", "Martin Kane (1949)", "Ryan's Hope (1975)", and "Quincy M.E. (1976)". She made hundreds of TV commercials, and was best known as "The Savarin Girl" for over five years of award-winning work for Savarin Coffee on NBC's Saturday Night News (1950-55).
Jean was one-sixth of The Improvisors (along with Larry Blyden and Ross Martin), who appeared for a season on one of the very first improv TV shows, "What Happens Now?" for New York's WOR-TV (1949-50); her own local N.Y. show, "Jean Alexander's Pet Party" on Channel 7, received an NYU award for best children's program. She most recently appeared in the films "Old Days (2008)" (2008--another award winner), "Chicken" (2008), and "Underwear (2009)" (2009) which won three film-festival awards. Her last performances were in video sketches for HBO and The Onion (2010-11).
Jean married Jules Alexander in 1950 and divorced in 1952. She married Arnold Schulman in 1954; the marriage ended in divorce in 1974. - Jean V. Alexander is a film and theater actress with a caring heart and a wicked sense of humor. She brings passion and empathy to each role, including her portrayal of June Steenkamp in Oscar Pistorius: Blade Runner Killer. When she is not working in the film and television industry, you can find her performing on stage with Sketchworks-Industrial Strength Comedy. She holds nothing back, with iconic characters like a crotchety old woman with sass or a simple-minded, sweet "Cinderella" in the all-female sketch comedy show Heels. Jean is also an accomplished portrait artist whose rendition of Alan Rickman as Severus Snape was featured on the BBC home page. Annually she performs live paintings that are auctioned to benefit Woodward Academy's tuition program for low-income students. Jean has painted a variety of artists, ranging from David Bowie, to John Lennon, to Ray Charles and most recently the late Tom Petty.
- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Jean Alexander Ntivyihabwa is known for Welcome to the 80's (2009), Afrikas neue Museen (2023) and Open Opera: Wer wird Carmen? (2012).- Visual Effects
Jean-Alexander Coupey is known for SantApprentice (2006).- Jean Alexander is known for 12 Floors and L.U.S.T (Loved Used as Sex Tool) (2019).
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
Jean Alexander is known for Bender (2016).- Shirley Jean Alexander Green is known for Chased.