Sylvia May Laura Syms OBE (born 6 January 1934) is an English actress, best known for her roles in the films Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957), Ice Cold in Alex (1958), No Trees in the Street (1959), Victim (1961), and The Tamarind Seed (1974). In 2006 she portrayed The Queen Mother in the Stephen Frears movie The Queen, about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and days leading up to Diana's funeral. She remains active in films, television and theatre.
Syms was born in Woolwich, London, England, the daughter of Daisy (née Hale) and Edwin Syms, a trade unionist and civil servant. She grew up in Well Hall, Eltham and was educated at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, on whose council she later served. Her daughter Beatie Edney is also an actress, and she is the aunt of musicians Nick and Alex Webb.
In her second film, My Teenage Daughter (1956), she played Anna Neagle's troubled daughter. In 1958, she starred in the film Ice Cold in Alex (alongside John Mills, Anthony Quayle and Harry Andrews); that same year she appeared in the English Civil War film, The Moonraker. In 1959 she played in Expresso Bongo with Cliff Richard. She played opposite Dirk Bogarde in 1961 in the film Victim, as the wife of a barrister who is a closet homosexual. The film was thought to have broadened the debate which led to the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in private. In 1962, she played opposite to Patrick McGoohan as the wife of a condemned man in The Quare Fellow and in 1963 she played Tony Hancock's wife in The Punch and Judy Man. The film also featured her nephew, Nick Webb. Other comedies followed, such as The Big Job (1965) with Hancock's former co-star Sid James and Bat Out of Hell (1967), but it was for drama that she won acclaim, including The Tamarind Seed (1974) with Julie Andrews and Omar Sharif, for which she was nominated for a British Film Academy award. My Good Woman in 1972 was a husband-and-wife television comedy series which ran until 1974 with Leslie Crowther. At the same time, she was one of two team captains on the BBC's weekly Movie Quiz, hosted by Robin Ray. In 1975, she was the head of the jury at the 25th Berlin International Film Festival. In 1989, Syms appeared in the Doctor Who story "Ghost Light".

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