Actress and producer Jill Freud has died at the age of 98.
Freud’s daughter, writer and broadcaster Emma Freud, announced the death of her mother on Instagram on Monday alongside a series of family photos.
“My beautiful 98 year old mum has taken her final bow,” she began. “After a loving evening – where we knew she was on her way – surrounded by children, grandchildren and pizza, she told us all to f*** off so she could go to sleep. And then she never woke up. Her final words were ‘I love you.'”
Emma then recounted her mother’s life and career, noting that Jill was evacuated to Oxford, England as a child and lived with author C.S. Lewis for three years. Lewis ended up basing the character of Lucy Pevensie in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe book series on Jill.
Emma continued, “She became an actress/producer and ran two rep theatre companies in Suffolk for 30 years – employing 100’s of actors who loved her for her passion, her care, her shepherd’s pie, her devotion to regional theatre and her commitment to actor’s (sic) rights. Her last film role was as the housekeeper at Downing Street in Love Actually.”
Jill played the housekeeper character Pat in the 2003 festive romantic comedy, which was written and directed by Emma’s husband Richard Curtis.
Concluding her post, Emma wrote, “She was 98, mother of 5, grandmother of 17, great grandmother of 7 – she was feisty, outrageous, kind, loving and mischievous. Lucky old heaven getting such a dazzling newcomer.”
Lewis later paid for Jill to study at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), after which she had a West End stage career as Jill Raymond. She married Clement Freud, the grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, in 1950, and they had five children. He died in 2009.
