11th April, 2020
British Actress Hilary Heath best known for her work on Witchfinder General and Wuthering Heights, has died from coronavirus complications.
According to Metro UK, the movie producer died at age 74.
The actress’ godson, Alex Williams, announced her demise an emotional statement on Facebook.
“We lost my wonderful Godmother Hilary Heath to Covid-19 last week,” Alex wrote.
Hilary had many careers, starting out as a screen and stage actress in the 1960s and 1970s, and then re-inventing herself as a producer in the 1990s, making films like Nil by Mouth (Gary Oldman) and An Awfully Big Adventure (Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman).
Her most remarkable re-invention came in her mid-60s, when she won a master’s degree from Oxford in psychology and became an addiction counsellor, specialising in CBT.
She worked at clinics all over the world, often for free, often with very deprived and distressed individuals, and she regarded this as her most valuable work by far. She was a force of nature, and I can’t bear it that she is no longer with us.’ Advertisement Advertisement The star’s first feature film was Witchfinder General in 1968, in which she played Sara Lowes, alongside actor Vincent Price.
In 1970, Hilary also starred as Isabella Linton in Wuthering Heights. Although the actress, who also had a successful stage career, retired from acting in the 90s, she went on to produce films including Mike Newell’s An Awfully Big Adventure, which starred Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman in 1995.
She also produced Gary Oldman’s Nil By Mouth in 1997, while her last credited on-screen work was as a producer on TV mini-series Jamaica Inn in 2014. Hilary was married to Duncan Heath from 1974 until their divorce in 1989, and has two children – Laura and Daniel.
There are now more than 1.5 million cases of coronavirus worldwide. More than 337,000 are known to have recovered. Over 89,000 deaths have been linked to Covid-19.