Shelagh Fraser

Sheila Mary Fraser (25 November 1920 – 29 August 2000) was an English actress. She is best known for her roles in the television serial A Family at War (1970–1971) and as Luke Skywalker's Aunt Beru in Star Wars (1977). Early life Shelagh Fraser was born in Purley, Surrey, on 25 November 1920. Her parents were John Newton Mappin Fraser and Vera Eleanor (née Beardshaw). Her father was a director of the jewelry company Mappin & Webb, and the family was sent to Australia to establish a branch of the family business there. They returned to the United Kingdom in 1924. As a child, Shelagh suffered from spinal tuberculosis, but overcame the debilitating effects of the illness. She was educated at St Christopher's School in Kingswood and won a scholarship to train as an actor at Croydon Repertory Theatre Drama School. It was there that Fraser made her first stage appearance in 1938. Career Fraser had a wide range of roles on the stage. She made her West End theatre debut in 1944 at the Comedy Theatre as Effie in This Was a Woman. She went on to play Mabel Crumm in While the Sun Shines (1945), Hetty, in Call Home the Heart (1947), Lady Orreyd in a revival of The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1950). She took roles in a number of plays in the 1960s and 70s by noted contemporary playwrights such as the role of Flora in Harold Pinter's A Slight Ache, Delia in Alan Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce, Martha in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, and Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.