Frances de la Tour (born 30 July 1944) is an English actress perhaps best known for her role as Miss Ruth Jones in the British sitcom Rising Damp, and as Madame Olympe Maxime in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
De la Tour was born in Bovingdon, Hertfordshire, to Moyra (née Fessas) and Charles de la Tour. She was educated at London's Lycée Français and the Drama Centre London, (a college of the University of the Arts Lon...
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Frances de la Tour (born 30 July 1944) is an English actress perhaps best known for her role as Miss Ruth Jones in the British sitcom Rising Damp, and as Madame Olympe Maxime in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
De la Tour was born in Bovingdon, Hertfordshire, to Moyra (née Fessas) and Charles de la Tour. She was educated at London's Lycée Français and the Drama Centre London, (a college of the University of the Arts London).
She is the sister of Andy de la Tour, and was briefly married to playwright Tom Kempinski. She has a son and a daughter.
On leaving drama school she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 1965 where she studied with Michel Saint-Denis. Over the next six years, she played many small roles with the RSC in a variety of plays, gradually building up to larger parts such as Hoyden in The Relapse and culminating in Peter Brook's acclaimed production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in which she played Helena as a comic "tour de force". In...
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