Lydia Bilbrook | |
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![]() Photographed by Bassano, 1917 | |
Born | Phillis Lydia Macbeth 6 May 1888 Billbrook, Somerset, England |
Died | 4 January 1990 Bromham, Bedfordshire, England | (aged 101)
Alma mater | Royal Academy of Dramatic Art |
Occupation | Actor |
Years active | 1906–1924 (stage) 1916-1917, 1939-1949 (film) |
Spouses | |
Children | 2 |
Relatives | Robert Walker Macbeth (father) Norman Macbeth (grandfather) Gen. John Bates (grandfather) John Thomas Hall (brother in law) |
Lydia Bilbrook (born Phillis Lydia Macbeth, 6 May 1888 – 4 January 1990), sometimes credited as "Bilbrooke", was an English actress whose career spanned four decades, first as a stage performer in the West End, and later in films. She is best known to today's audiences as "Lady Ada Epping" opposite comedian Leon Errol in the Mexican Spitfire movie comedies of the 1940s.
She took her professional name from her home town of Bilbrook. She made her first stage appearance in 1906 and her last in 1924. She created roles in Where the Rainbow Ends (1911), The Great Adventure (1913), and Dear Brutus (1917). She played the role of Alice Hobson in the first London production of Hobson’s Choice (1916). She retired from the stage after her second marriage, in 1924, but appeared in several films between 1940 and 1949, most of them made during her residence in the US during the Second World War and early postwar years.