Morag Hood was a Scottish actress described by many commentators as "a celebrated beauty," who featured in numerous British programmes, stage productions, and audio presentations from the 1960s up to the late 1990s.

Morag Hood was born in Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, and was a graduate of the University of Glasgow

University of Glasgow

The University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...

. One of her earliest jobs was as a presenter of youth programmes on Scottish Television. In April 1964 Morag and fellow presenter Paul Young

Paul Young (actor)

Paul Young is a Scottish television actor and presenter. He is the son of the actor John Young. Educated at George Heriot's School in Edinburgh....

 interviewed the Beatles

The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

. The interview, recorded at the Scottish Television studios, Cowcaddens, Glasgow was thought to be lost for many years. The reel of 16mm film was later found in a rusting film can in South London.

She is particularly renowned for playing Natasha Rostova

Natasha Rostova

Countess Natalya "Natasha" Ilyinichna Rostova is a central fictional character in Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace.-Biography:...

 in the epic 1972 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...

 television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 adaptation of War and Peace

War and Peace (TV series)

War and Peace is a television dramatization of the Leo Tolstoy novel of War and Peace. This 20 episode series began on September 28, 1972.The BBC dramatisation of Tolstoy's epic story of love and loss set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars...

. Thereafter, Morag Hood starred in numerous other British television series, including: Z-Cars

Z-Cars

Z-Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby in the outskirts of Liverpool in Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.-Origins:The series was developed by...

, The Borderers

The Borderers

The Borderers is a British television series produced by the BBC between 1968 and 1970.- Setting :A historical drama series, The Borderers was set during the 16th century and chronicled the lives of the Ker family, who lived in the Scottish Middle March on the frontier between England and Scotland...

, Bergerac

Bergerac (TV series)

Bergerac was a British television show set on Jersey. Produced by the BBC in association with the Seven Network, and screened on BBC1, it starred John Nettles as the title character Detective Sergeant Jim Bergerac, a detective in "Le Bureau des Étrangers" Bergerac was a British television show...

, Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre (1983 TV serial)

Jane Eyre is a 1983 British television serial adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's novel of the same name, produced by BBC and directed by Julian Amyes. The serial stars Zelah Clarke as the title character, and Timothy Dalton as Edward Rochester...

, Families

Families (TV series)

Families was a daytime soap opera produced by Granada Television and created by Kay Mellor. It followed two families; the Thompsons, based in Cheshire, England , and the Stevens, living in Sydney, Australia....

and Hamish Macbeth

Hamish Macbeth (TV series)

Hamish Macbeth is a television series made by BBC Scotland and first aired in 1995. It is loosely based on a series of mystery novels by M. C. Beaton . The series concerns a local police officer, Constable Hamish Macbeth in the fictitious town of Lochdubh on the north coast of Scotland. The titular...

. She also starred in the controversial 1990 BBC 1 drama "A Sense of Guilt" .

She also appeared in an episode of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet is a British comedy-drama television programme about seven English migrant construction workers. In the first series, the men live and work on a building site in Düsseldorf....

(second series, 1986, No Sex, Please, We're Brickies) as Joy Chatterley, an attractive local resident who ended up having a fling with Oz (Jimmy Nail).

In 2001 she received great acclaim for her stage performance (her final one) in A Listening Heaven

A Listening Heaven

A Listening Heaven is a play for six actors written by the English dramatist Torben Betts.It is a domestic tragedy centring on the suicide of a young eco-warrior and the inability of his rather conservative, emotionally repressed family to cope with his death.The play was initially championed by...

 by Torben Betts

Torben Betts

Torben Betts is an award-winning English playwright and screenwriter.A consistently controversial dramatist, who has written heavily naturalistic plays as well as epic, poetic works, he has been hailed as a successor to writers as diverse as Alan Ayckbourn, Edward Bond and Howard Barker...

 at the Edinburgh Royal Lyceum. She was nominated for Best Actress in that year's TMA Awards.

Morag Hood died in a London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 hospice on the 5th October, 2002, following a long battle with cancer

Cancer

Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

, at the age of 59. She had two elder siblings: Liam Hood (the late Scottish TV executive) and Eila Ferguson. She lived in Fountayne Road, Stoke Newington (for a while with Martin Shaw with whom she was romantically involved) but never married and had no children.