A FORMIDABLE PRESENCE (REMEMBERING HELEN McCRORY)

Helen McCrory was never one of those actors whose characters went unnoticed.

No matter how big the part, she burned bright onstage or onscreen and she always grabbed her audience's attention.

Her sharp intelligence and formidable presence were her greatest assets and they saw her work on stage, film and television with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Richard Eyre, Lasse Hallstrom, Sam Mendes, Gillian Armstrong, Neil Jordan, Stephen Frears and Alan Rickman.

She excelled in theatre in many classical roles.

However she will be best remembered as Aunt Polly, the one character who would not be intimidated by the intelligence of Cillian Murphy's Brummie gangster Thomas Shelby in Steven Knight's stylish BBC1 series 'Peaky Blinders'.

Born in Paddington in London in 1968, her father was a diplomat from Scotland and her mother was from Wales.

Her father's work meant he was posted to the Cameroon, Tanzania, France, Norway and Madagascar and the family travelled with him.

Between the age of six and nine, Helen had lived in Dar es Salaam where her mum also taught horse riding.

As a teenager, Helen also got to live in Paris.

She would later tell the Guardian in an interview in 2013: "My parents were unneurotic, emotional and safe.

"Nobody ever pretended you were anything but what you were. We weren't frightened of failure and were taught to laugh at ourselves. 

"I was encouraged to trust my instincts. Your instincts become better as you get older and you act upon them." 

Educated at the independent, girls only Queenswood School in Hertfordshire, she spent a year living in Italy before returning to Britain to embark on an acting career.

McCrory later attributed her vocation to a school teacher who imbued her with a love of theatre by taking her class to many productions.

She landed a place in the Drama Centre in Chalk Farm in London whose alumni includes Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, Penelope Wilton, Gwendoline Christie, Colin Firth, John Simm, Gemma Chan, Luke Evans, Russell Brand and Michael Fassbender.

There she not only learned stage craft but improv, Stanislavski, Joan Littlewood's theatre tradition and the European classics.

She also caught the eye of the celebrated director Richard Eyre in a production who brought her to the National Theatre.

"He gave me a lead on the main house at the National," she recalled 

"He then went on to give me another seven leads over four years and, really, that was my third training."

One of Helen's first notable roles was as Gwendoline Fairfax in a 1990 Harrogate Theatre production of Oscar Wilde's 'The Importance of Being Earnest' and she also impressed as the flirty Gail Saunders in John Godber's 'Teechers' at the same venue.

She quickly established a reputation as a formidable stage presence in productions of 'Macbeth,' 'Pride and Prejudice,' Federico Garcia Lorca's 'Blood Wedding' for which she won a Manchester Evening News Theatre Award for Best Actress and the Restoration drama 'Venice Preserv'd' at the Royal Exchange.

In 1993, she picked up third prize in the Ian Charleson Awards for her performance as Rose Trelawny in a National Theatre production of Arthur Wing Pinero's 'Trelawny of the Wells'.

Her first taste of television was an appearance in 1993 in the Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais ITV sitcom 'Full Stretch' about a limousine service with Kevin McNally, Sue Johnston and Reece Dinsdale.

Within a year, she found herself on the set of a major Hollywood movie in the minor role of a prostitute cavorting with Tom Cruise's vampire Lestat in Neil Jordan's hugely successful 'Interview with the Vampire'.

Jim McBride cast her that year in the art restoration movie 'Uncovered' with Kate Beckinsale, John Wood, Sinead Cusack, Paudge Behan and Art Malik. 

In Karl Francis' 1995 BBC 'Screen Two' tragicomic film 'Streetlife' with Rhys Ifans, she played a gutsy mum dealing with an unexpected pregnancy on a South Wales housing estate.

She won a Royal Television Society Best Actress award for her performance as well as BAFTA Cymru and Monte Carlo Television Festival awards.

During the 1990s, McCrory would appear in acclaimed productions of Anton Chekhov's 'The Seagull,' George Bernard Shaw's 'The Devil's Disciple,' as Lady Macbeth in the Globe Theatre, in a Barbican Theatre production of 'Les Enfants du Paradis' and alongside Colin Farrell in the Donmar Warehouse in Gary Mitchell's hit play about Ulster loyalism 'In a Little World of Our Own'.

Paula Milne's BAFTA award winning Channel 4 miniseries 'The Fragile Heart' would fuel her reputation as an actor of some distinction, earning her a Best Actress nomination from the London Film Critics Circle.

She played the ruthless and ambitious daughter of Nigel Hawthorne's cardiac surgeon in the drama alongside a cast comprising of Dearbhla Molloy, Dominic Mafham and Robert Langford Lloyd. 

In 1998, she had a notable role alongside Joe McFadden and Marc Warren as one of three people held at gunpoint by Patrick Stewart's grieving father in Betsan Morris Evans' revenge thriller 'Dad Savage' with Kevin McKidd.

There were roles in Lynda La Plante's popular ITV police procedural 'Trial and Retribution,' the BBC TV movie of Lee Hall's 'Spoonface Steinberg,' Les Blair's BBC film 'Stand and Deliver' with Phil Daniels and the BBC2 TV movie 'Split Second' with Clive Owen and James Cosmo about an accident prone driver.

The year 2000 saw her appear in Terence Gross's indie black comedy 'Hotel Splendide' with Toni Collette, Daniel Craig, Katrin Cartridge, Stephen Tompkinson and Hugh O'Connor.

Helen took on the lead role on Allan Cubitt's well received four part adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina' in 2000 on Channel 4 with Kevin McKidd, Stephen Dillane, Mark Strong, Amanda Root, Douglas Henshall and Paloma Baeza.

Kevin Reynolds directed her in his well received 2002 big screen version of Alexandre Dumas' 'The Count of Monte Cristo' as Valentina Villefort with Jim Caviezel, Guy Pearce, James Frain, Henry Cavill and Luis Guzman.

In 2001, the London Film Critics Circle and the Broadcasting Press Guild recognised her performance in the Channel 4 legal drama 'North Square' with Best Actress awards.

McCrory played a barrister who crosses swords with Phil Davis' Machiavellian clerk in the drama which also starred Kevin McKidd, Rupert Penry-Jones and Victoria Smurfit.

In 2001, there were rave reviews for her performance in the BBC2 Kevin Hood and Neil Biswas' 10 episode family saga 'In A Land of Plenty' with Robert Pugh and Shaun Dingwall.

In 2002, she landed an Evening Standard Theatre Award nomination for Best Actress for her performance as Elena in a Donmar Warehouse production of Anton Chekhov's 'Uncle Vanya'.

Helen was a juror in Peter Morgan's ITV legal drama 'The Jury' alongside Gerard Butler, Michael Maloney, Nina Sosanya, Sylvia Sims, Steven Mackintosh, Jodhi May, Julie Walters, Ronald Pickup, John Lynch, Derek Jacobi and Anthony Sher - the first TV miniseries to be filmed in the Old Bailey which was a hit with viewers.

There were appearances as Kate Dickens in Peter Ackroyd's 2002 BBC TV docudrama 'Dickens' about Charles Dickens, in ITV's 2003 adaptation of Kingsley Amis' 'Lucky Jim' with Stephen Tompkinson, Keeley Hawes and Robert Hardy and as a murder victim in the one-off Greek island crime drama 'Carla' on ITV with Leslie Sharp, Iain Glen, Shaun Dingwall and Michael Fassbender.

She received a Best Actress nomination at the LA Television Awards for her role as Barbara Villiers, the Countess of Castlemaine in Joe Wright's BBC1 and A&E Network miniseries 'Charles II: The Power and the Passion' with Rufus Sewell, Rupert Graves, Ian McDiarmid, Anne-Marie Duff and Martin Freeman.

There was a supporting role in Roger Michell's 2004 psychological thriller movie of Ian McEwan's 'Enduring Love' with Daniel Craig, Rhys Ifans, Samantha Morton, Bill Nighy, Corin Redgrave and Susan Lynch.

Helen also turned up in BBC1's 'Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking' in an Allan Cubitt adaptation starring Rupert Everett, Ian Hart, Michael Fassbender, Perdita Weeks and Jonathan Hyde.

She was the mother of Heath Ledger's lead character in Lasse Hallstrom's 2005 movie 'Casanova,' with Sienna Miller, Jeremy Irons, Oliver Platt, Lena Olin, Omid Djalili and Ken Stott which got a mixed reception from the critics.

She joined Stott for the fourth series of the BBC1 serial killer series 'Messiah' with Neil Dudgeon, Maxine Peake and Hugo Speer.

Her performance as Rosalind in a 2006 West End production of 'As You Like It' earned her a Best Actress nomination at the Olivier Awards.

2006 saw her cast as Cherie Blair in Stephen Frears' 'The Queen' with Helen Mirren in a Best Actress Oscar winning performance as Elizabeth II, Michael Sheen as Tony Blair, James Cromwell as Prince Philip and Alex Jennings as Prince Charles.

Her performance in the film about the events following the death of Princess Diana earned McCrory a Supporting Actress nomination from the London Film Critics Circle.

McCrory reprised the role for HBO and the BBC in Richard Loncraine's disappointing 2010 movie 'The Special Relationship' with Sheen, Dennis Quaid and Hope Davis about Prime Minister Tony Blair's close relationshipwith US President Bill Clinton - the third part of a Peter Morgan penned Tony Blair trilogy that started with 'The Deal'.

A hit with audiences and critics, it hoovered up Emmy, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations.

There was a well received performance as Victoria Frankenstein in a one-off 2007 Jed Mercurio contemporary retelling of Mary Shelley's horror story for ITV with James Purefoy and Lindsay Duncan.

The 2000s also saw her earn widespread adulation for her performances in Chekhov's 'Platonov,' Joanna Laurens' 'Five Gold Rings' and in an Evening Standard Theatre Awards nominated role in Henrik Ibsen's 'Rosmersholm' at the Almeida Theatre, as Olivia in 'Twelfth Night' and Anna in Harold Pinter's 'Old Times' at the Donmar Warehouse.

It was while co-starring with Damian Lewis in 'Five Gold Rings' that she became romantically involved with him, later claiming it was love at first sight.

The couple have two children - Manon and Gulliver and married in 2007.

As their careers blossomed, the family spent time between England and the US, including a four year stint in Los Angeles while Damian starred in the NBC crime series 'Life' which she appeared in.

McCrory joined a cast that included Anne Hathaway, James McAvoy, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters, Lucy Cohu, Ian Richardson and James Cromwell in Julian Jarrold's 2007 romantic drama 'Becoming Jane' which got mixed reviews and performed disappointingly in cinemas.

There was an appearance in Baillie Walsh's underwhelming 2008 movie 'Flashbacks of a Fool' with Daniel Craig, Jodhi May, Claire Forlani, Felicity Jones, Emilia Fox and Harry Eden.

She was cast as Draco Malfoy's mum Narcissa in David Yates' 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince' alongside Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Michael Gambon, Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman, Jason Isaacs, Helena Bonham Carter and Tom Felton in the sixth instalment of the fantasy movie franchise spawned by JK Rowling's novels. 

She reprised the role in Yates' final two installments 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I' in 2010 and 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II' in 2012.

2009 also saw McCrory provide the voice of Mrs Bean in Wes Anderson's terrific animated version of Roald Dahl's 'Fantastic Mr Fox' with George Clooney, Meryl Street, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Brian Cox and Michael Gambon.

In 2010, she shone as Celia Smithers in a Donmar Warehouse revival of Simon Gray's 'The Late Middle Classes' with the Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington praising the way she combined "waspishness with vulnerability" in the role of the mother.

It earned her another Evening Standard Theatre Awards nomination for Best Actress but she captured a Critics Circle Theatre Award.

In Noel Clarke's critically panned 2010 Anglo American thriller for the big screen '4.3.2.1.', she joined a cast that included Tamsin Egerton, Emma Roberts, Mandy Patinkin, Kevin Smith, Plan B and Ophelia Lovibond.

There was a memorable role as the Saturnynian matriarch Rosanna Calvierri in a Venetian set episode of the BBC1 sci-fi series 'Dr Who' during Matt Smith's debut season in 2010 as the Time Lord.

Martin Scorsese directed her in his spectacular 2011 Parisian family adventure 'Hugo' with Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jude Law, Ray Winstone, Savhs Baron Cohen, Emily Mortimer and Christopher Lee in which she played the actress wife of Ben Kingsley's silent movie illusionist and director Georges Melies.

There was an eye catching performance as an MP who gives Judi Dench's M a grilling in Sam Mendes' 007 espionage action adventure 'Skyfall' in 2012 with Daniel Craig as James Bond, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Albert Finney, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw and Rory Kinnear.

McCrory played the fashion editor Baroness Clare Rendlesham in John McKay's 2012 film 'We'll Take Manhattan' for BBC4 which starred Karen Gillan as Jean Shrimpton and Anuerin Barnard as the photographer David Bailey.

McKay's TV movie won Best European TV drama at the Prix Europa awards. 

She won Theatre Actress of the Year at the 2013 Glamour Awards for her performance opposite Julie Walters and Rory Kinnear in the National Theatre's production of Stephen Beresford's 'The Last of the Haussmans' that also earned her an Olivier nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

There was another acclaimed role as a married hotel manager who has an affair with Callum Turner's university student in the Tony Marchant three-part ITV miniseries 'Leaving' with Sean Gallagher and Nick Dunning.

However 2013 would also see McCrory land her greatest TV part as the chain smoking, tough talking Shelby family matriarch Polly Gray in Steven Knight's stylish Birmingham set period gangster series for the BBC 'Peaky Blinders'.

A strong woman with an interest in spirituality who was every bit the intellectual equal of Cillian Murphy's Tommy Shelby, over five seasons McCrory went beyond the strong woman stereotype and explored her character's emotional frailty.

She won Best Actress for the part at the 2014 Biarritz Festival of Audio Visual Programming and was integral to its ratings success. 

McCrory had the lead role as Medea in a 2014 Olivier Theatre production of the Euripides' Greek tragedy, winning a Critics Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress.

Alan Rickman directed in the handsome 2014 period drama 'A Little Chaos' with Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Stanley Tucci and Jennifer Ehle which drew mixed reviews.

There were appearances too in Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's BBC2 black comedy 'Inside No 9' and as Tommy Cooper's mistress in the ITV one-off drama 'Not Like That, Like This' with David Threlfall, Amanda Redman, Gregor Fisher and Paul Ritter.

In Tom Harper's underwhelming 2015 supernatural horror film set during the London Blitz, 'The Woman In Black: Angel of Death,' McCrory played a school headmistress among a cast that included Jeremy Irvine, Phoebe Fox, Leanne Best and Ned Dennehy.

She played Queen Elizabeth I in Richard Bracewell's family comedy about Shakespeare, 'Bill' which featured the 'Horrible Histories' team of Matthew Baynton, Martha Howe-Douglas, Jim Howick, Ben Willbond, Simon Farnaby and Laurence Rickard as well as her husband Damian Lewis.

A critical success, Bracewell's film deserved a much wider release but picked up nominations for Best Comedy at the Evening Standard Film Awards and Family Film of the Year at the Into Film Awards.

Helen was nominated in 2015 for a Critics Choice Television Award in the Best Supporting Actress category for her performance as the spiritualist Evelyn Poole in Showtime and Sky Atlantic's horror series 'Penny Dreadful' with Eva Green, Timothy Dalton, Billie Piper, Josh Hartnett, Harry Treadway and Rory Kinnear.

In 2016, she received rave reviews as a human rights lawyer trying to prove the innocence of a man convicted of the killing of a 14 year old schoolgirl in Patrick Harbinson's critically acclaimed six episode ITV miniseries 'Fearless', with Wunmi Mosaku, John Bishop, Jack Shepherd and Michael Gambon.

McCrory was nominated for Best Actress in the Evening Standard Theatre Awards for her performance as Hester in Terence Rattigan's post-war drama 'The Deep Blue Sea' at the  National Theatre in 2016.

In Lone Scherfig's 2016 comedy drama movie 'Their Finest,' Helen played the sister of Eddie Marsan's showbiz agent among a cast that also included Gemma Arterton, Sam Claflin, Bill Nighy, Richard E Grant, Jeremy Irons and Paul Ritter.

McCrory's final movie role was in Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman's award winning, boundary pushing 2017 animation 'Loving Vincent' with Robert Gulaczyk, Saoirse Ronan, Chris O'Dowd, John Sessions and Jerome Flynn about the artist Van Gogh.

She got the chance to go head to head with Richard Gere in Tom Rob Smith's disappointing BBC2 miniseries 'MotherFatherSon' with Billy Howle, Niamh Algar, Sarah Lancashire, Ciaran Hinds and Pippa Bennett-Warner.

McCrory provided the voice of Asriel's demon Stelmaria in BBC1 and HBO's 2019 epic adaptation of Philip Pullman's fantasy adventure 'His Dark Materials' with Dafne Keen, James McAvoy, Ruth Wilson, Lin Manuel Miranda, Anne-Marie Duff, Gary Lewis and Andrew Scott.

In ITV's three part miniseries 'Quiz' last year, she was excellent as a QC defending the Ingrams in the 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?' fraud trial, performing alongside Matthew MacFadyean, Sian Clifford, Michael Jibson, Mark Bonnar, Aisling Bea and Michael Sheen's Chris Tarrant.

Her last TV appearance would be as a struggling Prime Minister in BBC1's David Hare scripted political thriller 'Roadkill' with Hugh Laurie, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Sarah Greene and Pippa Bennett-Warner.

During the Covid -19 pandemic, McCrory and her husband raised £1 million for health workers in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Cardidd through the 'Feed the NHS' initiative to ensure they got meals while helping patients battle the Coronavirus.

McCrory kept her battle with cancer quiet and even appeared on ITV's 'Good Morning Britain' to promote their work to raise funds for NHS workers four weeks before her death.

The announcement of her death, therefore, by her husband came out of the blue.

Cillian Murphy, Sam Neill, Aisling Bea, Matt Lucas, Joanna Lumley, Tracy Ann Oberman, Helen Mirren, Sam Mendes and JK Rowling were among those who paid tribute.

She had been due to reprise her role as Polly Gray in the sixth and final season of 'Peaky Blinders' and will leave a huge void in the series or any future spin-off movie.

But it speaks volumes that the last year of her life was spent helping others during a pandemic.

As an actress, Helen McCrory will be sorely missed.

As a human being she will be badly missed as a mum, wife, friend and as an advocate for those who have gone to extraordinary lengths to save the lives of others.

That in itself is some legacy.

(Helen McCrory passed away at the age of 52 on April 16, 2021)