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Actor and theatre director lived with ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ author CS Lewis after being evacuated during Blitz
Jacob StolworthyMonday 24 November 2025 11:24 GMTComments
CloseHugh Grant's Love Actually dance scene
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Lady Jill Freud, who appeared in Love Actually and inspired the character of Lucy in the Narnia books, has died aged 98.
The news was announced by her daughter Emma, the broadcaster and writer who is married to director Richard Curtis, who wrote: “My beautiful 98-year-old mum has taken her final bow.
“After a loving evening – where we knew she was on her way – surrounded by children, grandchildren and pizza, she 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’.”
When Freud was 16, she was evacuated to Oxford to escape the Blitz during the Second World War, where she ended up living with author CS Lewis for three years.
“He based the character of Lucy Pevensie in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe on her,” Emma wrote.
In a letter to Freud’s mother, Lewis wrote of her tenant: “I have never really met anything like her unselfishness and patience and kindness and shall feel deeply in her debt as long as I live.”
Freud then embarked on an acting career, with Lewis paying her fees to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), and she produced, directed and ran two repertory theatre companies in Suffolk – the Jill Freud and Company and Southwold Summer Theatre – for three decades.
open image in galleryJill Freud has died., aged 98 (Getty Images)Under her watch, she employed hundreds of actors “who loved her for her passion, her care, her shepherd’s pie, her devotion to regional theatre and her commitment to actors’ rights.”
Freud married broadcaster-turned-Liberal MP Clement Freud, the grandson of Sigmund Freud, in 1950, with whom she had five children. Clement died in 2009, aged 84.
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open image in galleryClement Freud married Jill in 1950 (Getty Images)She appeared in films including Jack Lee's The Woman in the Hall and TV shows Crown Court and Maigret.
Her last movie role was playing Pat, the housekeeper at Downing Street, in her son-in-law’s 2003 Christmas film Love Actually, sharing scenes with Hugh Grant and Martine McCutcheon.
In a tribute to her mother, Emma added: “She had the same lunch every day – a glass of red wine and a packet of crisps, and during Covid, aged 93, locked up with 3 other Freud gals, she took part in a tap class every morning.
open image in galleryJill Freud as Pat in 'Love Actually' (Universal Pictures)“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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