Judy Parfitt has been a regular on TV screens for almost seven decades. The Call the Midwife star has been a cast member of the long-running BBC show since it first aired in 2012.
The show follows a group of nurse midwives working in East End of London in the late 1950s as they deal with the pressures of their day-to-day lives and changes in the world around them. Judy is best known for her role as Sister Monica Joan in Call the Midwife.
The 89-year-old actress has had an incredible career, becoming a familiar face with many over the decades. Her acting career has also encompassed stage roles. In 1953 she graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, sharing the stage with legendary actors like Laurence Olivier. The BBC star made her stage debut with Fools Rush In, in 1954 and gained widespread recognition for her role as Gertrude in Hamlet alongside Anthony Hopkins.
Judy made her film debut in the 1950s, followed by a supporting role in the BBC’s David Copperfield in 1966. Other notable roles include Mildred Layton in the 1984 ITV series The Jewel in the Crown, a role she received her first BAFTA award nomination for. She also starred in Pride and Prejudice (1980), Stephen King’s Dolores Claiborne (1995) and Girl with a Pear Earring (2003).
Appearances in familiar TV shows including Heartbeat, Midsummer Murders and Vera have made the actress a household name. Judy was married to actor Anthony Steedman after the two exchanged vows in 1963 and they share son David together, who was born in 1964.
The actors found love after working on a play together at Birmingham’s Alexandra Theatre in 1960. On February 4 2001, Tony died after being diagnosed with vascular dementia. Having cared for her husband throughout his illness, Judy became passionate about spreading awareness about dementia, and she used her Call The Midwife character, Sister Monica Joan, to do so.
She told Mail Online in 2014: “Having watched my husband, the actor Tony Steedman, succumb to this terrible disease over ten years, depicting Sister Monica Joan’s condition is still an extremely important aspect of the role to me.”
She continued, in a moving admission: “While I loved Tony until his death, the man I had fallen in love with over four decades had disappeared several years earlier. Unlike the progression of his dementia, the development of our relationship is easier and far more pleasurable to remember.”
Born in 1935 in Sheffield, Judy talked about her wartime childhood experiences with Saga magazine, mentioning how she learned resilience during such dire times. She said “Growing up in the war, I learned how people just got on, despite food rationing, bombs dropping, not knowing if they’d be alive the next day.”