Lois Ramsey

Lois June Ramsey (née Dickson; 18 June 1922 – 22 January 2016) was an Australian actress, best known for her performances as eccentric old ladies on television soap operas. Roles include Homicide, The Sullivans, A Country Practice, Home and Away and Blue Heelers and the film Crackerjack.

She was a major cast member of the 1970s soap opera The Box as tea lady Mrs. Hopkins, appearing for the entire run of the serial. She also appeared twice in Prisoner—as dotty social worker Agnes Forster in 1980 and a more prominent role in 1985 as an elderly inmate Ettie Parslow, who thought that the Second World War was still going on.

She starred in guest roles in Blue Heelers. She played "Gwen" in CrackerJack and "Gran" in BoyTown, both films by comedian Mick Molloy.

In 2000, she won the AFI Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Guest Role in a Television Drama Series for a performance in the television series Grass Roots. Also a stage actress, she was one of the founders of the Flinders Street Revue Company in 1961 and appeared in musicals and satirical revues in her native Adelaide, which led to her becoming an actor and writer in comedy series The Mavis Bramston Show, later she appeared in numerous productions with both the Sydney Theatre Company and the Melbourne Theatre Company.

Born to Bill and Maud Dickson, she married Cuthbert Ward Ramsey on 25 September 1943. They had two children: Stephen Ramsey, a writer/director and the late actress Penny Ramsey.

Lois Ramsey died 22 January 2016, aged 93