ENGLISH ACTRESS and producer Hilary Heath has sadly passed away aged 74.
Her godson, Alex Williams, announced the news in a statement posted to Facebook.
Williams confirmed that Heath died of coronavirus complications.
As an actress, Heath was best known for starring roles in Witchfinder General and, most notably, Wuthering Heights.
Following a career on the stage and screen, Heath retired from acting in the 1990s but went on to produce a string of successful films including Mike Newell’s An Awfully Big Adventure and Gary Oldman’s Nil By Mouth.
She was married to Duncan Heath from 1974 until 1989 when the couple divorced. They had two children together – Laura and Daniel.
Writing on social media, Williams paid tribute to Heath’s incredible life and career, which extended beyond the realm of acting and into addiction counselling.
He wrote: “Hilary had many careers, starting out as a screen and stage actress in the 1960s and 1970s, and then re-inventing herself as a producer in the 1990s, making films like Nil by Mouth (Gary Oldman) and An Awfully Big Adventure (Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman). ‘Her most remarkable re-invention came in her mid-60s, when she won a master’s degree from Oxford in psychology and became an addiction counsellor, specialising in CBT.
“She worked at clinics all over the world, often for free, often with very deprived and distressed individuals, and she regarded this as her most valuable work by far. She was a force of nature, and I can’t bear it that she is no longer with us.”
