Lydia Bilbrook

Lydia Bilbrook (6 May 1888 – 4 January 1990; sometimes credited as Bilbrooke) was an English actress whose stage and film career spanned four decades. Bilbrook appeared in 23 films between 1916 and 1949; she is probably best known to today's audience as the haughty "Lady Epping" in the popular Mexican Spitfire movie comedies (1939-43) opposite Leon Errol.

The daughter of Lydia and Robert Walker Macbeth, Bilbrook was born Phillis Lydia Macbeth in Somerset. It is claimed that Bilbrook was an illegitimate daughter of the actor Herbert Beerbohm Tree.

In 1908 she appeared at the Comedy Theatre as Nellie Sellenger to the Mrs Dot of Marie Tempest in Somerset Maugham's play Mrs Dot. The drama critic of The Times judged Bilbrook's performance to be "flirtingly pleasant". In 1911 she appeared at the Savoy Theatre in Where the Rainbow Ends with Charles Hawtrey and a young Noël Coward. The costume she wore in Find the Woman at the Garrick was described at length in an interview with Miss Billbrooke in the Penny Illustrated Paper of 28 September 1912, 'The Most-Talked-Of Dress in England'. In 1913 she played in The Great Adventure at the Kingsway Theatre. She created the role of Alice Hobson in the London production of Hobson’s Choice: A Lancashire Comedy in 1916 at the Apollo Theatre.

Bilbrook married the actor Reginald Owen in 1909; they divorced in 1923. In 1923 Lydia married George Harrison Brown, a journalist known as 'HB', after the birth of his daughter, Blossom, who was registered as the daughter of Reginald Owen. It is believed Blossom died in 1927. HB and Lydia's second daughter Felicity was born in 1928.

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