‘Love Actually’ Actress’ Death Announced by Daughter: Jill Freud Was 98

Love Actually actress Jill Freud has died.

Her daughter, Emma, announced the news on Instagram on Monday. She was 98.

“My beautiful 98 year old mum has taken her final bow,” Emma wrote. After a loving evening – where we knew she was on her way – surrounded by children, grandchildren and pizza, she eventually told us all to f*** off so she could go to sleep. And then she never woke up. Her final words were ‘I love you’. She was 98, mother of 5, grandmother of 17, great grandmother of 7 – she was feisty, outrageous, kind, loving and mischievous. Lucky old heaven getting such a dazzling newcomer. Jill Freud.”

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Born June Beatrice Flewett on April 22, 1927 in West Kensington, London, England, Freud studied at London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in the mid-40s. She was evacuated with her school to Oxford during the war and became a volunteer housekeeper and hen-keeper in C.S. Lewis’ household. Freud is apparently the inspiration for Lucy Pevensie in Lewis’ beloved Chronicles of Narnia book series, according to The Telegraph. Lewis, who Freud said “influenced me hugely,” had even paid for her to go to RADA.

After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Freud made it big in the West End under the stage name Jill Raymond. She met and married British broadcaster and politician Sir Clement Freud, the grandson of Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, in 1950. The wedding came up quick, as Freud revealed that they had met in April that year and married that September. And instead of proposing, he merely announced it in The Times. Clement died in 2009, and they share five children.

Freud is known for her role as Pat the Housekeeper in the 2003 rom-com Love Actually. She was also the narrator and voice of Bossy Boots in the series Torchy, the Battery Boy. Additional credits include The Woman in the Hall, The Man Who Faced Facts, Whiteoaks, BBC Sundy-Night Theatre, Malta Story, Patrol Car, Rooms, Crown Court, and Maigret. Love Actually was her final on-screen role.

In addition to acting, Jill Freud formed her own theatre company, “Jill Freud and Company,” in Suffolk in 1980. In 2001, she received an Honorary Doctorate in Civil Law from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, for services to the theatre.