BARBARA FERRIS

(3 October 1936 - 23 May 2025)

The British actress and fashion model Barbara Ferris, who has died at the age of 88, made a mark on film, in the theatre and on television. Although never a big star name, she was always very good and had a sparkling personality which made her eminently likeable. Most television viewers would remember her from Coronation Street as Nona Willis, a barmaid at the Rover’s Return. However, she had plenty of experience which allowed her to tackle any role that came her way. Barbara Gillian Ferris was born in London, the second child of four to Roy Ferris and his wife Dorothy. Her father was a milkman with a round in Soho which was notorious for sex workers as well as being the hub of the British film industry. She trained at the Italia Conti stage school in the late 1950s and supplemented her father’s income by appearing as a dancer in television commercials and pantomime. Her first film was a short called Five Guineas a Week (in 1956) in which she played a dancer, while Coronation Street came along in 1961, but she left after just ten episodes because she couldn’t understand the Mancunian accent!

Ferris’s first real film was George Pal’s tom thumb in 1958, with Peter Sellers, Terry-Thomas and Russ Tamblyn, but the actress was not credited. She went on to make the courtroom comedy A Pair of Briefs with Michael Craig, Term of Trial with Laurence Olivier and then Sparrers Can’t Sing, working with Joan Littlewood and her Stratford East theatre company. The East End was also the setting for A Place to Go with Rita Tushingham and Mike Sarne. Ted Willis wrote Bitter Harvest, described as a kitchen sink drama with Janet Munro and John Stride. Ferris was never the star of these films although fame came later for her with John Boorman’s Catch Us If You Can (1965) featuring The Dave Clark Five who meet up with Ferris, who is the face on a Smithfield meat market poster, and they all go off on a jaunt, Clark to get shot of his job as a stuntman and Ferris to hide from her publicity as a model. It was a good film but still remains underrated, although Ferris was nominated by Bafta as most promising newcomer. She had a good part in Desmond Davis’s A Nice Girl Like Me (1969) as Candida who keeps on getting pregnant and was also in Michael Winner’s adaptation of Alan Ayckbourn’s A Chorus of Disapproval (1989), about a theatre company staging The Beggar’s Opera. Her last film was Peter Medak’s The Krays (1990), about the famous East End gangsters.

In 1965 Ferris appeared in one of the most shocking plays of its time – Edward Bond’s Saved, controversial because of the scene in which a baby is stoned in its pram. Although the Royal Court Theatre was prosecuted, the run went ahead under club conditions. Nothing as daring happened to Ferris’s later stage career which included There’s a Girl in My Soup with Donald Sinden and Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings. In 1960 Barbara Ferris married the film producer John Quested, the owner of Goldcrest Films. They had three children, Nick, Christopher and Catherine.

MICHAEL DARVELL