Actors will tell you that they don’t like to be typecast. The fact is, though, that the very best actors are typecast for good reason: because they possess something innately charismatic that they then reveal in their work. Not everyone has it, but for those who do, to be forever confused for your most famous TV character is not so much a slight as the highest of compliments.
And so much as, say, the late James Gandolfini will always be Tony Soprano, so Penelope Keith will always be The Good Life’s Margo Leadbetter. Keith, who has died at the age of 86, was a noted stage and television actor when, in 1975, aged 35, she accepted a part in a new BBC sitcom.
Margo was an upwardly mobile suburban housewife with a plum in her mouth and in possession of a great many airs and graces, and was married to sensible businessman Jerry (Paul Eddington). Both were horrified when their neighbours Tom and Barbara (Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal) decided to opt out of the rat race, and grow their own. The more Tom and Barbara self-sustained, the scruffier they grew. This did not impress the neighbourhood curtain-twitchers. What on earth, Margo feared, would Mrs Dooms-Patterson think?
Richard Briers as Tom Good, Felicity Kendal as Barbara Good, Paul Eddington as Jerry Leadbetter and Keith as Margo Leadbetter in ‘The Good Life’ (Photo: BBC Studios)
