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
Geoffrey Bayldon (1924 – 2017)
2
Miriam Margolyes OBE
3
Jan Harvey
4
Jean Alexander (born Jean Alexander Hodgkinson, 1926 – 2016)
5
Victoria Wood CBE (1953 – 2016)
6
Patricia Routledge CBE (born Katherine Patricia Routledge)
7
Tom Read Wilson
8
Ellen Perry
9
Sam Hoare
10
Todd Traina
11
Alex Wyndham
12
Dominique Dunne (1959 – 1982)
13
Brendan Jay Sullivan
14
Shirley Temple (AKA “America’s Little Darling”, 1928 – 2014)
15
Emily Mortimer
16
Ava Gardner (1922 – 1990)
17
Sofia Coppola
18
Charlie Siem
19
Kerry Washington
20
Gillian Anderson
21
James Bay
22
Aidan Turner
23
Robin Wright (formerly “Robin Gayle Wright” and “Robin Wright Penn”)
24
Emily VanCamp
25
Siân Phillips CBE
26
Zack Peck (also known as Zackary Peck)
27
Paula Wilcox
28
Jack Peñate
29
Ronnie Spector
30
Angela Lansbury
31
Theo James (born Theodore Peter James Kinnaird Taptiklis)
32
Eli Wallach (1915 – 2014)
33
Robert F. Kennedy III (AKA “Bobby Kennedy III”)
34
Gérard Depardieu
35
Sir Donald Sinden CBE, FRSA (1923 – 2014)
36
Henry Cavill
37
Josh Bowman
38
Matt Bomer
39
Felicity Kendal CBE
40
The Singing Lady
41
The Hon. Nigella Lawson
42
Lord Britten, OM, CH (better known as Benjamin Britten; 1913 – 1976)
43
Anton Lesser
44
Peter Czernin
45
Susan Bennett (AKA Siri and Tillie The All Time Teller)
46
Jake Shears (born Jason F. Sellards)
47
Anna Chancellor
48
Jamie Campbell Bower
49
Michael Cassidy
50
Wentworth Miller III
51
Flora Ogilvy
52
Cory Monteith (1982 – 2013)
53
Alan Whicker CBE (1925 – 2013)
54
Stuart Brayson
55
Mike Rosenberg (AKA Passenger)
56
Emmanuelle Seigner
57
Winona Ryder (born Winona Horowitz)
58
Bonnie Tyler (born Gaynor Hopkins, also known as Sherene Davis)
59
Libby Purves OBE
60
Penelope Wilton OBE
61
Richard Griffiths OBE (1947 – 2013)
62
Ben Howard
63
Rachel Khoo
64
Josh Henderson
65
Petula Clark CBE
66
Morena Baccarin
67
Anne Robinson
68
Gaspard Ulliel
69
Shia LaBeouf
70
Eddie Redmayne
71
Derek Paravicini
72
Antony Costa
73
Adele Adkins
74
Beverley Craven
75
Hugh Bonneville
76
Delia Smith CBE
77
Pam Ayres MBE
78
John Reith, The Rt. Hon. The Lord Reith KT GVCO GBE CB TD PC (1889 –1971)
79
Tippi Hedren (born Nathalie Kay Hedren)
80
Taylor Swift
81
Benjamin McKenzie (born Benjamin McKenzie Schenkkan)
82
Helen Worth (born Cathryn Helen Wigglesworth and also known as "Gail Platt")
83
William Roache MBE (better known as Ken Barlow)
84
Uggie
85
Damian Lewis
86
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!