Barbara Ewing is a UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

-based actress, playwright and novelist. Born in New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

, she graduated from Victoria University of Wellington

Victoria University of Wellington

Victoria University of Wellington was established in 1897 by Act of Parliament, and was a former constituent college of the University of New Zealand. It is particularly well known for its programmes in law, the humanities, and some scientific disciplines, but offers a broad range of other courses...

 with a BA in English and Maori before coming to Britain in 1965 to train as an actress at RADA

Rada

Rada is the term for "council" or "assembly"borrowed by Polish from the Low Franconian "Rad" and later passed into the Czech, Ukrainian, and Belarusian languages....

 (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) in London.

She made her film debut in the horror film

Horror film

Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

 Torture Garden

Torture Garden

Torture Garden may refer to:* The Torture Garden , novel by Octave Mirbeau* Torture Garden , album by Naked City* Torture Garden , film directed by Freddie Francis and written by Robert Bloch...

 (1967) for Amicus Productions

Amicus Productions

Amicus Productions is a British film production company, based at Shepperton Studios, England. It was founded by American producer and screenwriter Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg.-Horror:...

, followed by Dracula Has Risen from the Grave

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave is a 1968 British horror film directed by Freddie Francis for Hammer Films. It stars Christopher Lee as Count Dracula, with support from Rupert Davies, Veronica Carlson, Barry Andrews, Barbara Ewing, Ewan Hooper and Michael Ripper.- Plot :The film opens in a...

 (1968) with Christopher Lee

Christopher Lee

Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ is an English actor and musician. Lee initially portrayed villains and became famous for his role as Count Dracula in a string of Hammer Horror films...

 for Hammer Films. Both movies were directed by Freddie Francis

Freddie Francis

Frederick William Francis BSC was an English cinematographer and film director.He achieved his greatest successes as a cinematographer, including winning two Academy Awards, for Sons and Lovers and Glory...

.

The television role for which she is best remembered is that of Bradley Hardacres mistress Agnes Fairchild in the Granada Television

Granada Television

Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....

 comedy series Brass

Brass (TV series)

Brass was a British television Comedy-Drama, made by Granada Television for ITV.Set mostly in Utterley, a fictional Lancashire mining town in the 1930s, Brass was a comedy satirising the working-class period dramas of the 1970s and the American supersoaps such as Dallas and Dynasty...

, alongside Timothy West

Timothy West

Timothy Lancaster West, CBE is an English film, stage and television actor.-Career:West's craggy looks ensured a career as a character actor rather than a leading man. He began his career as an Assistant Stage Manager at the Wimbledon Theatre in 1956, and followed this with several seasons of...

 (1982–84). In 1986, she played Treen Dudgeon in the short-lived BBC series Comrade Dad

Comrade Dad

Comrade Dad was a BBC television comedy satire series set in 1999 in Londongrad, the capital of communist Britain. The UK has been invaded by the Soviet Union and had been turned into a Communist state...

, alongside George Cole and Doris Hare

Doris Hare

Doris Hare MBE was a Welsh actress, best known for her appearances as "Mum" in the popular sitcom On the Buses alongside Reg Varney and Stephen Lewis....

.

Her 1989 one-woman show, Alexandra Kollontai

Alexandra Kollontai

Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai was a Russian Communist revolutionary, first as a member of the Mensheviks, then from 1914 on as a Bolshevik. In 1919 she became the first female government minister in Europe...

, about the only woman in Lenin's cabinet in 1917 was a great hit in London, and at the Edinburgh

Edinburgh Festival

The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...

 and Sydney

Sydney Festival

Sydney Festival is Australia's largest and most attended annual cultural event running every January since it was first held in 1977. Its program features around 80 events including contemporary and classical music, dance, circus, drama, visual arts and artist talks...

 Festivals.

More recent TV appearances have included episodes of Casualty

Casualty (TV series)

Casualty, stylised as Casual+y, is a British weekly television show broadcast on BBC One, and the longest-running emergency medical drama television series in the world. Created by Jeremy Brock and Paul Unwin, it was first broadcast on 6 September 1986, and transmitted in the UK on BBC One. The...

, Doctors

Doctors (BBC Soap Opera)

Doctors is a British daytime television soap opera, set in the fictional Midland town of Letherbridge, defined as being close to the City of Birmingham. It was created by Chris Murray; Mal Young drove its development, and Carson Black was the original producer. The first episode was broadcast on...

 and Holby City

Holby City

Holby City, stylised as Holby Ci+y, is a British medical drama television series that airs weekly on BBC One.The series was created by Tony McHale and Mal Young as a spin-off from the established BBC medical drama Casualty, and premiered on 12 January 1999...

 on the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

, and The Bill

The Bill

The Bill is a police procedural television series that ran from October 1984 to August 2010. It focused on the lives and work of one shift of police officers, rather than on any particular aspect of police work...

 and Peak Practice

Peak Practice

Peak Practice is a British drama series about a GP surgery in Cardale — a small fictional town in the Derbyshire Peak District — and the doctors who worked there. It ran on ITV from 10 May 1993 to 30 January 2002 and was one of their most successful series at the time...

 on ITV

ITV

ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...

, as well as appearances in various adaptations of Ruth Rendell

Ruth Rendell

Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE, , who also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, is an English crime writer, author of psychological thrillers and murder mysteries....

mysteries.

Writing

Ewing has written 7 novels to date:

• Strangers (1978)
• The Actresses (1997)
• A Dangerous Vine (1999)
• The Trespass (2002)
• Rosetta (2005)
• The Mesmerist (2007)
• The Fraud (2009)

External links

• http://barbaraewing.com/