Obituaries: Anne Kristen

Playing the receptionist Norma Sullivan in Casualty, the Scottish actress Anne Kristen appeared in the BBC television medical drama at the height of its popularity. She based the character on a dragon she had once come across in a doctor's surgery.

So convincing was her portrayal that she had to put up with hostility from real-life hospital workers and, on arriving at Bristol Royal Infirmary's accident and emergency ward after hurting her hand when she fell over in the street, was told: "You're talking to a real receptionist now!"

Kristen, born in Glasgow in 1937, was set on a career in acting after appearing in a primary school nativity play. She trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and went on to perform for several seasons with the Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow, playing the title-role in St Joan, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing and Eliza in Pygmalion. South of the border, she appeared in productions at the Nottingham Playhouse, the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, the Greenwich Theatre and the Mermaid Theatre, in the West End of London. She acted Anne Puttnam in The Crucible at both the National Theatre and the Comedy Theatre.

But it was in her native Scotland that Kristen was most revered. She worked frequently with the Scottish Theatre Company, playing Mrs Barrie in Mr Barrie, Verity in The Thrie Estaitis, Elaina in Commedia and Mrs Gillie in Mr Gillie, and took the role of Agrafena in A Family Affair, at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh.

Kristen appeared in many television productions but, like many Scottish actors and actresses, was particularly in demand when BBC Scotland or Scottish Television were making dramas for national screening. She was in two series of Wings (starring Tim Woodward, 1977-78), King's Royal (as the mother-in-law of Tom Bell, 1982) and acted Mrs Wickett in the BBC's production of Goodbye Mr Chips (1984), a six-part Sunday-afternoon serial based on James Hilton's short novel of 1934 and starring Roy Marsden as the gentle old schoolmaster Mr Chipping.

She played the MP wife of Mark McManus in a Scottish Television play called Two Per Cent (1982), before taking two roles alongside him in Taggart (1986, 1994), including one of the last episodes recorded before his death, in which she acted one of a group of authors nominated for a prize but pipped to it by a writer who was then murdered, with suspicion falling on the others.

Kristen stayed with Casualty for three series (1991-93), getting grumpier by the week as Norma Sullivan hid from her colleagues the fact that at home she was caring for a mother with Alzheimer's disease. Her character eventually became the victim of a difficult menopause.

The actress was also in the legal drama Advocates (1992) and in The Tales of Para Handy (1994). Her appearance in an episode of Doctor Finlay (1994) brought together four of the grandes dames of Scottish theatre - Annette Crosbie, Edith Macarthur, Eileen McCallum and Kristen herself. The storyline also attracted exceptional attention because her character, Rachel Grant, was battling to get away from an asylum she had been committed to by her father almost 40 years earlier after giving birth to an illegitimate baby.

Kristen was in the films Living Apart Together (1983, starring the musician B.A. Robertson) and Silent Scream (1989, featuring Iain Glenn). She was last seen on screen as Miss Meiklejohn in an episode of the Scottish Highlands police drama Hamish Macbeth (1996), the BBC's answer to Heartbeat.

Her final television appearance, in the BBC's Screen One drama Truth or Dare, will be screened in September. She plays Mrs Hugill, who consults a solicitor (played by the Cardiac Arrest star Helen Baxendale) when she finds out that her husband - about to be called to the Bar and not wanting adverse publicity - is having an affair with a younger woman. Kristen herself was divorced from the Scottish television and film actor Iain Cuthbertson.

Anne Kristen, actress: born Glasgow 7 March 1937; married 1964 Iain Cuthbertson (marriage dissolved); died Leith, Lothian 7 August 1996.