Anne Reid loves playing aristocracy but was always considered too ‘downmarket’

British veteran actress Anne Reid said she was pigeonholed into playing domestic roles despite her public school education as she was considered to be “very downmarket”.

The 88-year-old said she “absolutely loves” playing Lady Denham, the matriarch of Sanditon, in the hit ITV period drama series based on the unfinished Jane Austen novel of the same name, which returns for its third and final series on Thursday.

However during her career, Reid was never being considered to be aristocratic, she said.

Appearing on Good Morning Britain, Reid said: “It’s glorious playing the Lady of the manor because I play domestic people, they always thought of me as being domesticated – which I’m not.

“They used to think I would act better if I’ve got a pan in my hand because in Upstairs, Downstairs I was in the kitchen.

“So actually to be aristocratic, I don’t know whether people think I’m not, but there are some people in this business, you get put into a slot.

“I mean Sir Derek Jacobi, who actually grew up in a tobacconist shop…I actually went to public school because my father was abroad, but he (Sir Derek) was always considered to be aristocratic and I’m always considered to be very down market.”

Reid’s next role will see her play a pensioner in BBC true life crime drama series The Sixth Commandment, which explores the deaths of Peter Farquhar and Ann Moore-Martin in Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire.

Speaking about co-star Eanna Hardwicke in the role of sadistic church warden Benjamin Field, Reid said: “He was very convincing that he was in love with me.

“He’s a really good actor, he’s not a bit like that. He’s very spooky (in the series), I want to see him do some high comedy now.”

In 2019, Field was jailed for at least 36 years following a campaign of physical and mental torture.

Reid described the four-part series’ director Saul Dibb as “wonderful”, saying: “It’s very difficult to explain to somebody who’s never actually worked in the studio what a difference it makes to have somebody who supports you.”

Talking about acting, she added: “I think it’s overrated, I don’t find it terribly hard…I would say I could teach anybody to act in an hour.

“I wanted to be a dancer. I was dance mad, I danced every night when I was a little girl and when I was 11, my parents went abroad and I was sent to boarding school and the dancing stopped.

“I think that’s when I started to put weight on, having danced every night of the week and Saturday mornings.”