Fenella Fielding: Carry On star who turned down a role in a Fellini film

The actress, who started her career in 1952 and shot to fame with 'Pieces of Eight' and 'Hancock's Half Hour', was known for her husky voice, wicked humour and seductive eyelashes

The actor, who was in the entertainment industry for seven decades, never finished drama school because her parents wanted her to 'get a proper job' (PA)

With her distinctively raspy voice and spider-like lashes, actor Fenella Fielding, who has died aged 90, is best remembered as “England’s first lady of the double entendre”.

Her role as Valeria in 1966’s Carry On Screaming!, where she delivered the line “Do you mind if I smoke?” while literally steaming on a chaise longue, cemented her reputation as a comedic vamp. However, her career might have taken a very different turn.

Fielding was born Fenella Marion Feldman in Hackney, London to a Romanian Jewish mother and a Lithuanian Jewish father. Though her father Phillip managed a cinema, he was horrified at the idea that his daughter might appear on screen. Fielding attended drama school for just a year before her parents forced her to leave, fearing for her reputation. Nonetheless, she pursued her dream and by the late 1950s she was already a star, appearing in Harold Pinter and Peter Cook’s Pieces of Eight and Hancock’s Half Hour.

Fielding starred in two Carry On films. Kenneth Williams played her younger brother in Carry On Screaming. He described her as “La Fielding” in his diaries, where he was unkind about her moods. In turn, she described him as “very difficult to work with. When he felt like it, it was just bliss. But he could be hideous.”

Fielding with Kenneth Williams and Bernard Bresslaw in the 1966 comedy 'Carry on Screaming!' (Rex)

Fielding was also a regular in the Doctor comedies and made guest appearances on Bring Me Morecambe & Wise. But while she was making a name as a comedic icon, she also played Shakespeare and Ibsen, Chekov and Sheridan. She is rumoured to have kept the writings of Plato on her bedside table.

Federico Fellini was captivated by Fielding’s serious side and asked her to star in one of his films. She turned him down because she was already contracted to appear at the Chichester Festival Theatre. It was a sliding doors moment. Fielding told The Independent: “He was gorgeous. But I’d already said yes to a play at Chichester. I thought it would be dishonourable to let them down. I would say that’s the thing I really regret.

Rather than silver-screen stardom, Fielding’s later career included a variety of genres of television; a part in Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson’s Guest House Paradiso, and a cameo in Skins. At 79, Fielding toured Ireland with a production of The Vagina Monologues. She also recorded an album with her take on Robbie Williams single “Angels” and Public Image Limited’s “Rise”. Last year, she published her autobiography. Remembering her most famous line, she called it, Do You Mind if I Smoke?

Fielding was awarded an OBE earlier this year. She was still working. The day before her stroke in August that would lead to her death, she had been in the studio, recording idents for LBC.

Fielding is survived by her older brother and political opposite, former Conservative member of the House of Lords, Basil Feldman, whom she publicly refused to support when he first ran for parliament.

Fenella Fielding, actor, born 17 October 1927, died 11 September 2018