Jacqueline Hill

Biography

Born in 17 December 1929, Jacqueline Hill was orphaned as a toddler and raised by her grandparents. She was taken out of school at the age of 14 to enable her younger brother to continue. She then worked at Cadbury's, which had an amateur dramatics society. She was encouraged to apply for, and was awarded, a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and entered RADA at the age of 16. She made her stage debut in London's West End in "The Shrike." Many more roles followed, including, on TV, Shop Window, Patrol Car (1954) and An Enemy of the People. It was around this time that she married top director Alvin Rakoff, who cast her opposite Sean Connery in one of ABC TV's Armchair Theatre plays. She was asked to play Barbara Wright in Doctor Who (1963) after she and producer Verity Lambert, whom she knew socially, discussed the role at a party. Soon after leaving the series in 1965 she gave up acting to raise a family. However, she resumed her career in 1979 and gained further TV credits on, amongst other programmes, Romeo & Juliet (1978), Tales of the Unexpected (1979), and the 1980 Doctor Who (1963) story "Meglos" (as a character called Lexa).