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Jill Freud, Actor Who Inspired Narnia’s Lucy, Dies at 98

Family tributes highlight her link to C. S. Lewis.

Overview

  • Daughter Emma Freud announced her mother's death at 98, recalling a final family evening and her last words, "I love you."
  • As a wartime evacuee, she lived with C. S. Lewis in Oxford, and obituaries note she inspired Lucy Pevensie in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
  • Lewis paid her RADA fees, launching a stage career that later included running Jill Freud and Company and Southwold Summer Theatre for about three decades in Suffolk.
  • Her last screen appearance was Pat, the Downing Street housekeeper in Love Actually, written and directed by her son-in-law Richard Curtis.
  • Born June Flewett, she married Clement Freud in 1950 and raised five children as tributes from friends and colleagues began to circulate.