Biographie
Originally trained as a singer at the Royal College of Music, she gave up her career on her marriage to Paul Spencer, who had himself briefly been an actor with the Anew McMaster touring company.
After the Second World War and her divorce, she worked as an assistant house mistress at Cheltenham Ladies' College and a teacher at Pate's Junior School in Cheltenham in order to support the education of her son Nicholas.
She returned to the stage in 1964, for a tour with the all-woman Osiris Repertory Company playing Shakespeare to schools and convents and then with Salisbury Arts Theatre.
Thereafter she worked in repertory at Lincoln Theatre Royal (where her son was at the time director of productions) and at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, Worthing, Westcliff, the Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham, Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch, the Arts Theatre, Ipswich, the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, the Theatre Royal, Bath, the Crucible, Sheffield and Birmingham Rep.
Among her numerous television appearances were Blott on the Lansdscape, When the Boat Comes In, as Daisy Pinfold in nineteen episodes of Crossroads, A Pin to See the Peepshow, Softly, Softly, Love Hurts, Lovejoy, The Bill and Miss Marple. She had leading roles for John Schlesinger in Separate Tables with Irene Worth and for Moira Armstrong in Countess Alice with Wendy Hiller. She also appeared in the films of Where Angels Fear to Tread and briefly for Richard Attenborough in Shadowlands.
In the West End she was in Waltz of the Toreadors with Trevor Howard, at the National Theatre as Thomas Mann's wife in Tales from Hollywood and at the Shaw Theatre in a revival of Pygmalion. Her final stage appearance, at the age of 83, was at the National Theatre, recreating her role of Julia Shillitoe in a stage revival of Anthony Page's television production of Absolute Hell with Judi Dench. Her last appearance on television was in 1996 in Sue Birtwistle production of Emma. Thereafter a slight stroke ended her career.
Sylvia was fascinated by history and discovered by chance that her great grandfather was the comic actor John Hughes, a close friend of Edmund Kean and a member of the Drury Lane company in the 1830s. He had married Elizabeth Jones, a notable Rosalind in As You Like It at Covent Garden in 1832. On Hughes' death Jones had suppressed her theatrical background. Sylvia traced the Jones family to Bath where in the late 18th century they had been leading members of the company touring the West Midlands circuit, theatre towns where Sylvia had herself so often appeared.
Something of an authority on Edwardian etiquette she was invaluable in period productions.
Sylvia was one of those who became an instant confidante to all in the girls' dressing room and is fondly remembered by so many with whom she worked.
She died in the actors retirement home Denville Hall in England, aged 94.
