An aristocratic actress, Chancellor is the daughter of the Hon. Mary Alice Jolliffe, a great-great-granddaughter of Herbert Asquith and a second cousin, once removed of Helena Bonham Carter. Born in Richmond, London, this star of the stage and screen is best known as “Duckface” in Four Weddings and a Funeral and as Juliet Shaw in Spooks. After Alan Rickman rushed to her rescue when she got meningitis whilst playing Tekla in Creditors in New York in 2010, she decided “life’s too short” and married her second husband, an Algerian former cab driver named Redha Debbah and of being remembered as “Duckface”, she told The Telegraph: “Someone once looked at me very intently when we met and said, slightly disappointed, that I didn’t look anything like a mallard in real life”.
The Roll Call - SIGHTS AND SOUNDS
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1
Dame Dorothy Tutin DBE (1930 – 2001)
2
Geoffrey Bayldon (1924 – 2017)
3
Miriam Margolyes OBE
4
Jan Harvey
5
Jean Alexander (born Jean Alexander Hodgkinson, 1926 – 2016)
6
Victoria Wood CBE (1953 – 2016)
7
Patricia Routledge CBE (born Katherine Patricia Routledge)
8
Tom Read Wilson
9
Ellen Perry
10
Sam Hoare
11
Todd Traina
12
Alex Wyndham
13
Dominique Dunne (1959 – 1982)
14
Brendan Jay Sullivan
15
Shirley Temple (AKA “America’s Little Darling”, 1928 – 2014)
16
Emily Mortimer
17
Ava Gardner (1922 – 1990)
18
Charlie Siem
19
Sofia Coppola
20
Kerry Washington
21
Gillian Anderson
22
James Bay
23
Aidan Turner
24
Robin Wright (formerly “Robin Gayle Wright” and “Robin Wright Penn”)
25
Emily VanCamp
26
Siân Phillips CBE
27
Zack Peck (also known as Zackary Peck)
28
Paula Wilcox
29
Jack Peñate
30
Ronnie Spector
31
Angela Lansbury
32
Theo James (born Theodore Peter James Kinnaird Taptiklis)
33
Eli Wallach (1915 – 2014)
34
Robert F. Kennedy III (AKA “Bobby Kennedy III”)
35
Gérard Depardieu
36
Sir Donald Sinden CBE, FRSA (1923 – 2014)
37
Henry Cavill
38
Josh Bowman
39
Matt Bomer
40
Felicity Kendal CBE
41
The Singing Lady
42
The Hon. Nigella Lawson
43
Lord Britten, OM, CH (better known as Benjamin Britten; 1913 – 1976)
44
Anton Lesser
45
Peter Czernin
46
Susan Bennett (AKA Siri and Tillie The All Time Teller)
47
Jake Shears (born Jason F. Sellards)
48
Jamie Campbell Bower
49
Anna Chancellor
50
Michael Cassidy
51
Wentworth Miller III
52
Flora Ogilvy
53
Cory Monteith (1982 – 2013)
54
Alan Whicker CBE (1925 – 2013)
55
Stuart Brayson
56
Mike Rosenberg (AKA Passenger)
57
Emmanuelle Seigner
58
Winona Ryder (born Winona Horowitz)
59
Bonnie Tyler (born Gaynor Hopkins, also known as Sherene Davis)
60
Libby Purves OBE
61
Penelope Wilton OBE
62
Richard Griffiths OBE (1947 – 2013)
63
Ben Howard
64
Rachel Khoo
65
Michelle Dockery
66
Josh Henderson
67
Petula Clark CBE
68
Morena Baccarin
69
Anne Robinson
70
Dame Judi Dench CH, DBE, FRSA
71
Gaspard Ulliel
72
Shia LaBeouf
73
Eddie Redmayne
74
Derek Paravicini
75
Laura Carmichael
76
Antony Costa
77
Beverley Craven
78
Adele Adkins
79
Hugh Bonneville
80
Delia Smith CBE
81
Pam Ayres MBE
82
John Reith, The Rt. Hon. The Lord Reith KT GVCO GBE CB TD PC (1889 –1971)
83
Tippi Hedren (born Nathalie Kay Hedren)
84
Taylor Swift
85
Benjamin McKenzie (born Benjamin McKenzie Schenkkan)
86
Helen Worth (born Cathryn Helen Wigglesworth and also known as "Gail Platt")
87
William Roache MBE (better known as Ken Barlow)
88
Uggie
89
Damian Lewis
90
Lyndon Ogbourne
Can we please be a little more scrupulous in labelling people ‘aristocratic’?
I see that even the Delavigne girls is described so even though the grandfather was a mere Liverpool engraver: nothing wrong with that, merely that hardly aristocratic. The same applies here. Asquith came from perfectly respectable middle class Yorkshire stock, but Matthew is being somewhat excitable if he thinks Miss C is thus aristocratic. My great uncle was a baronet but it certainly does mean I am an aristocrat!
Pete: She is the great-great-granddaughter of the 12th Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham (a descendant of Thomas Cecil, 1st Earl of Exeter and William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley) also. Is that not enough for you?
The class structure of Britain today, in my view, though, has collapsed into a hierachy of the elite (the super wealthy), the middle classes and the underclass. The old aristocracy is very much “middling” now as much as are ordinary working people.
Well, I am a direct descendant of the last Duke of Bridgwater,but I am very far from being a member of the aristocracy. A friend of mine is Robert Cecil’s daughter and she often jokes that her famous ancestor started life in working in a pub as the accountant. The Cecils, later….. rather embellished their pedigree!
In reality, it is virtually impossible for most families….aristocratic or not, to trace back more than 600 years. Pedigrees were the subjects of great flights of fancy….
Back to Miss Chancellor….most of us if we work hard enough can claim tenuous links with old families, but that does not make us aristocratic.
Now if you had told me she was the Duke of Beaufort’s daughter I would not be disputing with you!