Jean Alexander

Jean Alexander
Hilda Ogden Waxwork at Madam Tussauds
Born	Jean Mavis Hodgkinson (1926-10-11)11 October 1926 Toxteth, Liverpool, England
Died	14 October 2016(2016-10-14) (aged 90) Southport, England
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1949–2010
Television	Coronation Street Last of the Summer Wine

Jean Mavis Hodgkinson (11 October 1926 – 14 October 2016), known by the stage name Jean Alexander, was a British television actress. She was best known to British television viewers as Hilda Ogden in the soap opera Coronation Street, a role she played from 1964 until 1987, and also as Auntie Wainwright in the long-running sitcom Last of the Summer Wine from 1988 to 2010. For her role in Coronation Street she received a 1987 BAFTA TV Award nomination for Best Actress.

Alexander was born in Toxteth, Liverpool, in 1926, to Nell and Archie Hodgkinson; her father worked as an electrician and the family lived in a terraced house with no indoor lavatory. Alexander had an elder brother, Kenneth. She aspired to become an actress from an early age, and later said that she was inspired by variety acts she saw at the Pavilion theatre in her home city. She attended St Edmund's College for Girls in Princes Park, Toxteth and as a teenager, she joined an amateur theatre group and took elocution lessons.

Alexander spent five years as a library assistant in Liverpool before she began her acting career in 1949 at the Adelphi Guild Theatre in Macclesfield. She first appeared as Florrie in Sheppey by Somerset Maugham. She later worked in rep in Oldham, and York. Most of her parts were minor, and she also worked as a wardrobe mistress and stage manager. Her television debut is variously given as in the police series Z-Cars or in Deadline Midnight.