Rachel Gurney

Rachel Gurney (5 March 1920 – 24 November 2001) was an English actress. She began her career in the theatre towards the end of World War II and then expanded into television and film in the 1950s. She remained active, mostly in television and theatre work, into the early 1990s. She is best remembered for playing the elegant Lady Marjorie Bellamy in the ITV period drama Upstairs, Downstairs. Biography Early life and education Rachel Gurney was born in Buckinghamshire, England on 5 March 1920. Her father, Samuel Gurney Lubbock, was a housemaster at Eton and her mother, Irene Scharrer, was a concert pianist. Due to her parents' occupations, Gurney grew up in a large house with 42 boys that was often host to visiting artists and musicians. As a teenager, she attended the Dr Challoner's High School in Little Chalfont, Buckinghamshire. In 1938, Gurney entered the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art to study acting. World War II postponed her acting career, and she did not make her stage debut until 1945 with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, working under director Barry Jackson. At the close of the war, she quickly became a regular presence on the West End, making her debut in 1946 as Lynne Hartley in Warren Chetham-Strode's The Guinea Pig at the Criterion Theatre.