Person Biography:
Helen Fraser was born Helen Margaret Stronach on June 15, 1942, in Oldham, Lancashire. She is an English actress who has been active in the industry since the early 1960s.
Fraser trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) alongside notable actors Tom Courtenay and John Thaw. Her breakthrough role came alongside Courtenay in the 1963 film Billy Liar.
She is perhaps best known for her long-running role as the unpleasant warder Sylvia Hollamby in the ITV women's prison drama Bad Girls, which she played from 1999 to 2006. Fraser reprised her role in the West End production of Bad Girls: The Musical in 2007.
Throughout her career, Fraser has appeared in numerous television shows, including Z-Cars, Dixon of Dock Green, The Likely Lads, Doctor in the House, The Dustbinmen, On the Buses, Rising Damp, Tales of the Unexpected, Duty Free, One Foot in the Grave, and Casualty. She has also worked with comedians like Dick Emery and the Two Ronnies in the 1970s.
In addition to her television work, Fraser has also had a successful stage career, performing with the Royal National Theatre, in the West End, and in regional theatres across the country. In 2009 and 2010, she toured the UK as Mrs. Fisher in a stage version of Billy Liar, and in 2011, she joined the tour of Calendar Girls.
Fraser has made appearances in the ITV soap Coronation Street twice, in 1998 and 2013, and in 2015, she appeared in an episode of the BBC daytime soap Doctors.
In her personal life, Fraser married recording engineer Peter Handford in 1964, and they had met on the set of Billy Liar. Handford passed away in 2007. Fraser currently resides in Eye, Suffolk.
