Corinne Skinner-Carter

Corinne Skinner Carter (born 1931) is a Trinidadian actress, based in the United Kingdom. As Corinne Skinner, she began acting professionally in the 1950s. She has worked in black British film and television, and is possibly best known for her role as Audrey Trueman in BBC's EastEnders.

Born Corinne Skinner into a privileged Trinidadian family, she began her theatrical career almost immediately after school, dancing with the company of Geoffrey Holder (brother of dancer and artist Boscoe Holder). As she recalled: "My grandmother was very upset because I had to go on the stage and she said, ‘nice girls do not go on the stage.’" She went to the UK in 1955 to train as a teacher. Soon after arriving there she married her childhood sweetheart, the educationist Trevor Carter (1930–2008) at Christ Church, Hampstead, on New Year’s Eve, 1955. While training, she supplemented her income by dancing and acting in film and television. She continued to perform while simultaneously working as a teacher for Islington London Borough Council in North London.

Her first acting role was a small part in a BBC play, The Green Pastures, in 1958. She made an early uncredited appearance in the film Flame in the Streets in 1961, and throughout the 1960s she appeared as a dancer in Cleopatra (1963), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) and Live and Let Die (1973). Other minor parts followed in TV shows such as Dixon of Dock Green, Play for Today, Coronation Street (1975) and Man About the House, until the late 1970s, when she was cast as Hortense Bennett in the television drama series Empire Road (BBC, 1978–79), her breakthrough role.

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