Obituary: Lynette Davies

Lynette Davies, actress: born Tonypandy, Mid Glamorgan 18 October 1948; twice married; died December 1993.

IT WAS as the high-powered businesswoman Davinia Prince in the Seventies drama series The Foundation that Lynette Davies found national fame, although her interest was always in acting, not stardom.

Born in Tonypandy in 1948, the daughter of a Customs and Excise officer, she was educated at Our Lady's Convent School, Cardiff, and trained at Rada, before going into repertory theatre at the Bristol Old Vic. She later acted with the Royal Shakespeare Company (1974-77).

When celebrity status came, it was on television as the star of The Foundation, playing one of the first women to be featured as the main character in a boardroom-to-bedroom drama, with a young Patsy Kensit as her daughter. The programme ran for two series (1977 and 1978), with Davies as a bossy, bitchy tycoon who could be as ruthless as any man.

She had previously appeared on television in The Ghosts of Motley Hall, Clayhanger and Will Shakespeare, and subsequently acted in Tales of the Unexpected and Inside Story, although she spent most of her later years on stage, in the West End and in New Zealand, Canada and America.

Twice married, the second time to the television set designer Jose Furtado, with whom she lived in Toronto while working in the theatre and on radio there, Davies once said: 'I enjoy acting, but I also enjoy my privacy. I really didn't want to make millions and be a star.'

(Photograph omitted)