Maria Charles

Diminutive, red-haired London-born stage and screen character actress Maria Charles was born of Jewish ancestry as Maria Zena Schneider, the daughter of hairdresser David Schneider and his wife Celia (née Ashken - originally Ashkenaza). A RADA graduate of 1946, her career spanned more than six and a half decades, beginning in 1945. The following year, she made her debut on the West End stage in Pick-up Girl, a play penned by Russian-American dramatist Elsa Shelley. Her first lengthy theatrical run (April 1953 to February 1959) was in the role of Dulcie, one of the 'perfect young ladies', in Sandy Wilson's hit musical The Boy Friend. Charles made her first screen appearance in 1947. She went on to amass numerous credits in miniseries and episodic television, in the course of which she acquired a solid reputation for roles as fussy or over-protective Jewish matriarchs (Bea Fisher in ITV's sitcom Agony (1979), Rita Green in Bar Mitzvah Boy (1976)), Dickensian characters ("The Infant Phen