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Obituary : Jeillo Edwards

from Cathy (cathyvpreece@aol.com)

Obituary

Jeillo Edwards

African character actor whose range shone on the BBC World Service

Robin White
Tuesday July 27, 2004

The Guardian

Jeillo Edwards, who has died aged 61, was one of the leading African character actors of her time. Her range was enormous: venomous market women, long-suffering wives, sugar mammies, matriarchs, mothers-in-law, politicians and prostitutes.

Her opportunities to play African roles - as opposed to the Caribbean ones more generally available in Britain - came through the BBC World Service for Africa. For the past 40 years, its regular African Theatre series has broadcast new work by such writers as Wole Soyinka, Gcina Mhlope, Ola Rotimi, Simon Gitandi, Dr Ochieng Odero and Alem Mezgebe.

That was where I, as a producer, first met Jeillo, in 1980, and she was one of the most disciplined actors I ever came across. Well-prepared and punctual (often a little early), she was diligent during rehearsals and recordings - and she kept the rest of the cast in order. She was, at once, the peacemaker, the encourager, the enforcer.

Indeed, we rather exploited her. Because she was so adaptable, she always got the character parts - the hags and the bags. She was never cast as the one thing she craved to be, a juvenile lead. On radio, you do not have to be 16 and beautiful to be convincing as a young woman, but somehow it was always easier to give Jeillo the older parts, because she played them so well. She never quite got the roles and the fame that her talents deserved.

Auntie Jeillo, as just about everyone called her, was a very distinctive figure: short and on the large side of plump. When she smiled, which was most of the time, her teeth jutted out like a jumbled assortment of broken crockery, and her marvellous giggle would light up any gathering.

Born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, she came from a Krio-speaking family and went to the city's Annie Walsh Memorial school, the oldest girls' school in sub-Saharan African. Her parents were not keen on her performing ambitions, but she was not deterred. She got the acting bug at the age of four from giving a Bible reading, and never looked back.

She arrived in England in the 1950s, living first with relatives in Leeds, and then moving to London, where she studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Like most black actors, she had difficulty finding work, and what she did get were mostly walk-on caricatures. But she accepted anything that was offered with good grace, doing the best she could with few, often poorly written, lines.

In the early 1970s, she married a Ghanaian, Edward Clottey, and they had a daughter and two sons. She plunged herself into community life: Sierra Leone cultural groups, her local church in Kennington, south London, and being a school governor. A celebrated cook and ginger wine maker, she opened a restaurant - Auntie J's - in Brixton. Her speciality was the traditional west African Akara dish, based on black-eyed beans.

Meanwhile, the work began to come. An appearance in Dixon Of Dock Green in 1972 was followed by episodes of The Bill and Casualty. In the BBC2 drama documentary A Skirt Through History (1992), she played the freed slave Mary Prince, and in the Channel 4 drama Exile (1998), the mother of a deposed dictator.

In television comedy, she had cameo parts in Black Books, Red Dwarf, Little Britain, The League Of Gentlemen and Absolutely Fabulous. Her film credits included Beautiful Thing (1996) and Dirty Pretty Things (2002), as a hospital cleaner.

All this was achieved against the background of chronic kidney problems and dialysis, though Jeillo never discussed them with me. Instead, she would turn up to rehearse on time, on form, with the same brilliant smile.

Her husband and children survive her.

· Jeillo Angela Doris Clottey (Edwards), actor, born September 23 1942; died July 2 2004

(posted 7185 days ago)

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