Patricia Hodge

Patricia Ann Hodge (born 29 September 1946) is an English actor. She made her West End debut in 1972 and starred in the 1973 West End production of Pippin, directed by Bob Fosse. She received two Olivier Award nominations for Best Actress in a Musical, before winning the 2000 Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the play Money.
Other roles include the 1983 film Betrayal, the TV series Rumpole of the Bailey (1978–1992), the 1986 TV adaptation of The Life and Loves of a She-Devil and the TV film Hotel du Lac (1986), for which she received a Best Actress BAFTA TV Award nomination. From 2009 to 2015, she starred in the BBC sitcom Miranda.

Hodge was born in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire. The daughter of the Royal Hotel owner/manager Eric and his wife Marion (née Phillips), Hodge attended Wintringham Girls' Grammar School in Weelsby Avenue in Grimsby and then St. Helen's School, Northwood, Middlesex, before attending Maria Grey College (became West London Institute of Higher Education in 1976 then the Twickenham campus of Brunel University from 1995–2005), Twickenham to train as a teacher. She taught English and drama at Russell County Primary School in Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, whilst also applying to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. She started at LAMDA when she was 22, being awarded on graduation the Eveline Evans Award for Best Actress.

Hodge made her professional stage debut in the Howard Barker play No-One Was Saved at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in 1971. She made her West End debut in Rookery Nook in 1972, and worked with Bob Fosse in 1973 on Pippin. However, when applying for television work she found she had become classed as a theatre actress. Having made the breakthrough in the role of Phyllida (Trant) Erskine-Brown in Rumpole of the Bailey, she found when trying to make the occasional return to theatre work that she had been classed as a television actress. Finding the need to have a flexible career to care for her young children, Hodge made the decision to focus her career on the stage, and hence is mainly seen on television in focus parts and singular roles in-between chosen different theatre roles.

She has appeared in roles as diverse as in The Naked Civil Servant opposite John Hurt, shortly after she featured in the BBC's 1975 Christmas production Great Big Groovy Horse, a rock opera based on the story of the Trojan Horse shown on BBC2 starring Julie Covington, Bernard Cribbins and Paul Jones. It was later repeated on BBC1 in 1977 She featured as Myra Arundel in the 1984 BBC version of Noël Coward's Hay Fever, as Margaret Thatcher in The Falklands Play, and in 2007 as Betty, the wife of tycoon Robert Maxwell, in the BBC TV drama Maxwell opposite David Suchet. She took the female lead in the 1983 film, Betrayal (based on Harold Pinter's play Betrayal), a roman à clef derived from the playwright's affair with broadcaster Joan Bakewell.

She co-starred with Dame Judi Dench in the 1995 London revival of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music as Countess Charlotte Malcom.

She was nominated for a BAFTA for her role in a television adaptation of Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac in 1987, and was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 2000 for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the production of Money at the Royal National Theatre. Hodge is an Honorary Graduate (DLitt) of Brunel University and one of the founder members of the Brunel Club. Since 2009, she has played a comedy role in the BBC sitcom Miranda, as the mother of the eponymous main character. She is joint President of Grimsby's Caxton Theatre.

Hodge married music publisher Peter Douglas Owen on 31 July 1976 in Tonbridge. The couple have two sons: Alexander Richard Charles (born March 1989); and Edward Frederick James (born January 1992).

Television

Films

Stage

• No-One Was Saved, 1971
• Rookery Nook, 1972
• Popkiss, 1972
• Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1973
• Pippin, 1973
• Hair, 1974
• The Beggar's Opera, 1975
• Pal Joey, 1976
• Look Back in Anger, 1976
• Then and Now, 1979
• The Mitford Girls, 1981
• As You Like It, 1983
• Benefactors, 1984
• Lady in the Dark, 1988
• Noël and Gertie, 1989–90
• Shades, 1992
• Separate Tables, 1993
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1994
• A Little Night Music, 1995
• Money, 1999–2000
• Summerfolk, 1999–2000
• Noises Off, 2001–02
• His Dark Materials, 2003–04
• Dream Me a Winter, 2006 (part of the Old Vic's '24 Hour Plays')
• Boeing Boeing, 2007
• The Country Wife, 2007–08
• The Clean House, 2008
• Calendar Girls, 2008-09
• The Breath of Life, 2011
• Dandy Dick, 2012
• Relative Values, 2013–14
• Travels with My Aunt, 2016

• "Travels With My Aunt review". The Guardian. 27 April 2016. Retrieved 27 September 2016.