Jennifer Daniel

Blonde Welsh leading actress who spent the majority of her career working in television. Her rare forays to the big screen resulted in two of the more intense heroines inhabiting the world of Hammer horror in the 60's. On both occasions she appeared opposite Noel Willman: as one of his victims in The Kiss of the Vampire (1963) and as a newlywed wife in 19th century Cornwall by The Reptile (1966), who does not know that he is a sinister neighbor. Jennifer began acting after a brief flirtation with performing music (as a clarinetist in the Welsh National Youth Orchestra). She studied at London's Central School of Speech and Drama and then went on to the repertory stage. Her earliest TV credits were mainly in anthology dramas and adaptations of classics, commencing with a tiny part in a BBC production of Great Expectations (1959). She went on to marry the star Dinsdale Landen who played Pip (a union which endured until his death in 2003). In Barnaby Rudge (1960), Jennifer had a more substantial role to play as the old locksmith's daughter, Dolly Varden. She also appeared for ITV as Ophelia, opposite Barry Foster's Hamlet (1961), as Lady Edith Plantagenet in Richard the Lionheart (1962) and even got to star in a short-lived (and, alas, forgotten) six-part BBC thriller entitled A Man Called Harry Brent (1965) (penned by the prolific Francis Durbridge). During the 70's and 80's, Jennifer remained much in demand providing poise and decorum to anything from cop shows (Barlow at Large (1971)), to period dramas (The Duchess of Duke Street (1976)) and sitcoms (Keeping Up Appearances (1990)).