Dame Maureen Lipman DBE has been an actress and writer for fifty-five years. She was born in Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, and trained at LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art).

At the start of a long and distinguished career in theatre, she spent three happy years with the National Theatre Company at The Old Vic led by Sir Laurence Olivier. She appeared in Re: Joyce, an acclaimed one-woman tribute to Joyce Grenfell which ran several times over five years in the West End. Other self-written one- woman shows include Live and Kidding (Duchess Theatre) and Up For It (Edinburgh Fringe and Purcell Room).

Other theatre credits include: See How They Run (Shaftesbury Theatre): As You Like It (RSC); Outside Edge and Martin Sherman’s Messiah (Hampstead); Oklahoma (NT); Lost in Yonkers (Strand Theatre); Daytona (Park Theatre & Haymarket Theatre); Harvey (Birmingham Rep) and The Best Man (Playhouse Theatre).

Film credits include: Oklahoma, the Oscar-winning The Pianist and Educating Rita.

TV credits include: Agony; Love’s Labours Lost; playing Evelyn Plummer in Coronation Street, and fronting Celebrity Gogglebox. She appeared in ITV’s DNA Journey with Rula Lenska which kept her buoyant during lockdown.

She appeared in fifty-five BT adverts in the nineties – one of the first creations to ‘go viral’. She has also presented TV documentaries on style, Art Deco, memory and travel.

Radio credits include: To Hull and Back, and her self-written show Maureen and Friends on BBC Radio 4.

She was married for thirty-three years to the late writer Jack Rosenthal, appearing in three of his TV plays including the Emmy-winning The Evacuees. Her partner of fourteen years, Guido Castro, died in 2021. It was Martin Sherman who said: “You are a fortunate woman to have lost two such wonderful men”.

She paints for pleasure and has tried stained glass making, spray painting and collaging everything in sight. A simulated flight machine is the next venture into the unknown.

She has published ten books through Robson Books, some of which made it to the charts. She has two writer children, Amy and Adam, and two Grandchildren, Ava and Sacha. She was delighted to be awarded a Damehood in 2021.

Maureen recently completed the timely revival of Martin Sherman’s Rose at the Ambassadors Theatre, following on from successful runs online and at the Hope Mill and Park Theatres, of which she won the Offie for Best Solo Performance (Plays).

Other accolades include: a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Comedy Performance in See How They Run. Best Newcomer at The Inside Soap Awards 2019 and Best Comedy Performance, at The British Soap Awards 2023 for her portrayal of Evelyn Plummer in Coronation Street. In 1994, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Hull.

Christmas 2024, Maureen will be spreading wit and magic Mrs. Potty in Beauty and the Beast at the Richmond Theatre.