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Helen Fraser (born Helen Margaret Stronach; 15 June 1942, Oldham, Lancashire) is an English actress with a career spanning television since the early 1960s. Internationally, she is best known for her roles in Billy Liar (1963) and Repulsion (1965). She gained recognition for playing the dour warder Sylvia Hollamby in the prison drama Bad Girls, appearing from its debut in 1999 through to its finale in 2006.
She trained at RADA alongside notable actors such as Tom Courtenay and John Thaw. Fraser's breakthrough came with Billy Liar (1963), starring alongside Courtenay. They reunited to play the parents of Dave Best in The Royle Family Christmas special (2008).
Fraser is especially recognized for her extended portrayal of Sylvia Hollamby in ITV's Bad Girls from 1999 to 2006, a role she reprised in the 2007 West End production of Bad Girls: The Musical.
Her television debut was in the early 1960s, and her credits include appearances in Z-Cars, Dixon of Dock Green, The Likely Lads, Doctor in the House, The Dustbinmen, On the Buses, Rising Damp, Tales of the Unexpected, Duty Free, One Foot in the Grave, and Casualty. During the 1970s, she also worked with comedians such as Dick Emery and the Two Ronnies.
On stage, Fraser has performed with the Royal National Theatre, in the West End, and in regional theatres throughout the UK. Between 2009 and 2010, she toured the UK portraying Mrs Fisher in a stage adaptation of Billy Liar. In 2011, she joined the touring production of Calendar Girls.
Fraser has appeared twice in the ITV soap Coronation Street: in 1998 as Magenta Savannah and in 2013 as Doris Babbage.
In 2015, she featured in an episode of the BBC daytime soap Doctors.
In 1964, she married recording engineer Peter Handford, whom she met on the set of Billy Liar. Handford passed away in 2007. Fraser currently lives in Eye, Suffolk.
