Anna Cropper

An acclaimed performer, British actress Anna Cropper was prolific in showcasing her talents across a broad spectrum of theater and television work spanning more than 40 years. She made her TV debut in the early 1960s, including a four-episode appearance on the massively successful series "Coronation Street," the 50-year-plus running soap on which her one-time husband, William Roache, has starred as Ken Barlow since the series' inception. Cropper was married to Roache for a little over a decade in the 1960s and early 1970s, and they had two children together, including their son Linus Roache, a successful British-American crossover actor who in the late 2000s was a regular on "Law & Order." In 1967, Cropper had the opportunity to work with legendary English film auteur Ken Loach, starring as the schizophrenic Kate Winter in the television play "In Two Minds." Then, in the early 1970s, Cropper bounced from a lead role in a U.K. TV version of "The Exorcist" to playing a chief inspector on an episode of "Dial M for Murder," followed by a long stint on the daytime serial "Couples" in the mid-1970s. After maintaining a steady dose of stage and screen work over the ensuing decades, Cropper landed one of her most substantial roles at age 57, playing matriarch Margaret Castle on all 24 episodes of the 1995 TV mini-series, "Castles." During her final years of life in the 2000s, Cropper split her time between her base in West Sussex and a vacation home in Turkey.