Acting
Apr 22, 1948
Woking, Surrey, England, UK
Tessa Wyatt
Acting
Biography
Tessa Wyatt is an English actress best known for her role as Vicky Tripp (née Nicholls) on the ITV sitcom Robin's Nest. Wyatt was born in Woking, Surrey and attended Elmhurst Ballet School. She was encouraged to act by her maternal grandmother and got her first professional job at the age of 12, appearing in a television programme featuring Richard Hearne's Mr. Pastry character. Soon after, she was represented by an agent. Wyatt's early television appearances include parts in Z-Cars, The Wednesday Play, Tales of Unease, ('Suspicious Ignorance', episode), Public Eye (in which she played a character with the surname Blackburn - she would later marry Tony Blackburn in 1972), Callan, Dixon of Dock Green, Doctor at Large, Play for Today, and UFO. Her film appearances include Wedding Night (1970), the cult horror film The Beast in the Cellar (1970) and Spy Story (1976). Wyatt claimed during a 2013 interview that while filming England Made Me (1973) opposite Peter Finch and Michael York, as a young actress alone abroad the "pervy director" Peter Duffell tried to coerce her into unnecessarily stripping naked for a scene. From 1977 to 1981, Wyatt played Vicky Nicholls, later Tripp, in the ITV sitcom Robin's Nest. Her on-screen boyfriend Robin Tripp was played by Richard O'Sullivan. Following Robin's Nest, Wyatt appeared in Return of the Saint, Boon and 2point4 Children. Wyatt was part of the original cast of the Channel Five soap opera Family Affairs, playing Samantha Cockerill. Since 2000 she has also appeared in Casualty and Doctors. She appeared in the fifth series of Peep Show as Jeremy's mother and was Tom's love interest in an episode of The Old Guys opposite Roger Lloyd-Pack and Clive Swift. In 2013, she joined the cast of EastEnders, playing Betty Spragg. She made a second appearance on the BBC series Doctors on 19 May 2015 alongside George Layton, another sitcom stalwart from the 1970s.
Feature Films (14)
The tale of a young Irish Catholic bride who is devastated when her pregnant mother miscarries and dies on her wedding day. The young woman, one of seven children, blames her father’s lust for the death. When her own wedding night arrives she is terrified and refuses to consummate the marriage with her husband. Her parish priest forbids her to accept her doctor’s suggestion that she should use contraception and she is driven to desperate measures.
I Can't... I Can't...
Soldiers in a rural English town are being brutally murdered by an unknown creature. Two nearby sisters realise they might understand what's happening.
The Beast in the Cellar
A nuclear war specialist returns from a mission gathering data on Soviet communications and electronic warfare techniques in the Arctic Ocean to find that his flat has been broken into and mysteriously re-decorated.
Spy Story
In this look at Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), aka Lewis Carroll, Dennis Potter mixed biographical drama with a psychological profile to explore the roots of Dodgson's creativity. Dodgson tells stories to ten-year-old Alice Liddell, leading to recreations of scenes adapted from ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND (1865), designed to resemble the original Sir John Tenniel illustrations.
Alice
Once, long ago, Clive Breeze was a hero whose bravery won him a medal. Now, he's a middle-aged failure who's in big, big trouble.
The Gong Game
Television & Series (26)
A secret, high-technology international agency called SHADO defends Earth from alien invaders.
UFO
Callan is the title of a British television series set in the murky world of espionage. Originally produced by ABC Weekend Television and later Thames Television, it was aired on the ITV network over four seasons spread out between 1967 and 1972. The series starred Edward Woodward as David Callan, a reluctant professional killer for a shadowy branch of the British Government's intelligence services known as 'the Section'.
Callan
Robin's Nest is a British sitcom, a spin-off from Man About the House, focusing on Richard O'Sullivan as Robin Tripp. It aired for six series from 11 January 1977 to 31 March 1981, and co-starred Tessa Wyatt as Robin's girlfriend – and later wife – Vicky, and Tony Britton as her father.
Robin's Nest
An anthology of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known.
Thirty-Minute Theatre
The city of Haarlem, Netherlands, has set a prize of ƒ100,000 to the person who can grow a black tulip, sparking competition between the country's best gardeners to win the money, honour and fame. Only the city's oldest citizens remember the Tulip Mania thirty years prior, and the citizens throw themselves into the competition. The young and bourgeois Cornelius van Baerle has almost succeeded but is suddenly thrown into the Loevestein prison. There he meets the prison guard's beautiful daughter Rosa, who will be his comfort and help, and eventually become his rescuer.
