
Acting
Feb 23, 1933
Hertfordshire, England, UK
Rita Davies
Acting
Biography
Rita Davies (24 February 1933 – 19 January 2016) was a British character actress whose career spanned nearly six decades. She is best known for her cameo as the Historian's Wife in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and her sustained role as Sarah Frobisher-Smythe in House of Anubis (2011). Her other film credits include Children of Men (2006), The Da Vinci Code (2006), and Beauty and the Beast (2017, posthumous). On television she appeared in Brideshead Revisited (2008), Casualty, Doctors, Call the Midwife, Unforgotten, and Sherlock. She died of cancer at age 82 in Esher, Surrey. No major awards are on record.
Feature Films (28)

King Arthur, accompanied by his squire, recruits his Knights of the Round Table, including Sir Bedevere the Wise, Sir Lancelot the Brave, Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot and Sir Galahad the Pure. On the way, Arthur battles the Black Knight who, despite having had all his limbs chopped off, insists he can still fight. They reach Camelot, but Arthur decides not to enter, as "it is a silly place".
Monty Python and the Holy Grail

The waters surrounding an island become contaminated by chemical dumping, and people who eat fish caught in those waters become deformed and violent.
Doomwatch

Jenny, a young American woman, moves to Paris and gets involved with Jack, who is seemingly the man of her dreams. However, he has a lot to hide and Jenny quickly gets entangled his dangerous lifestyle.
Tempo

Play about Eileen who steals a baby, and the reactions of those around her, including the priest, police, and authorities and the consequences of what she does.
Baby Love

Set in the fields of Devon and the WW1 battlefields of Flanders, two brothers fall for the same girl while contending with the pressures of their feudal family life, the war, and the price of courage and cowardice.
Private Peaceful

After the death of his father, a teenage boy forms a healing friendship with a park ranger in the Yorkshire Dales.
Lad: A Yorkshire Story

When Steve Coogan is asked by The Observer to tour the country's finest restaurants, he envisions it as the perfect getaway with his beautiful girlfriend. But, when she backs out on him, he has no one to accompany him but his best friend and source of eternal aggravation, Rob Brydon.
The Trip

A serial killer uses a horror video rental to lure his next victim. What begins as a teen slasher transforms into a disturbing journey through the mind of Max Parry, a mild mannered wedding photographer with a taste for human flesh.
The Last Horror Movie

Virgil Oldman is a world renowned antiques expert and auctioneer. An eccentric genius, he leads a solitary life, going to extreme lengths to keep his distance from the messiness of human relationships. When appointed by the beautiful but emotionally damaged Claire to oversee the valuation and sale of her family’s priceless art collection, Virgil allows himself to form an attachment to her – and soon he is engulfed by a passion which will rock his bland existence to the core.
The Best Offer

An up-tight lawyer, Lenny Rubins, has to put his dream retirement on hold when his ailing mother emotionally blackmails him into reuniting his estranged children for a Jewish holiday. They may be peas from the same pod, but in Lenny's eyes, his grown-up children are certainly not even from the same planet: a ruthless control-freak and hard-nosed capitalist, an outspoken, argumentative eco-warrior committed to the cause, an outer-worldly Buddhist Monk; and to cap it all, a bible bashing born-again Rabbi. While they might quarrel, fight, and perhaps even be starting a war in Africa, they are still family. It is going to take a whole lot of soul-searching and sacrifice for everyone to come together in this comic drama. Written by monterey media inc.
Reuniting the Rubins

If you were a famous English novelist doing a whistle stop tour of the United States to promote your books, wouldn't you welcome with open arms the chance of a quiet weekend away from it all in a remote corner of Long Island? Of course you would. Well, let what happened to Evan Lorrimer be an awful warning....
What Mad Pursuit

A shy teenage boy trying to escape the influence of his domineering mother, has his world changed when he begins to work for a retired actress.
Driving Lessons
Television & Series (42)

A modern update finds the famous sleuth and his doctor partner solving crime in 21st century London.
Sherlock

Cuckoo is every parent's worst nightmare - a slacker full of outlandish, New Age ideas. Ken is the over-protective father of a girl who's impulsively married an American hippie on her gap year.
Cuckoo

A sharp detective with a messy life, DCI Vera Stanhope patrols her “patch” of northeast England, pursuing the truth in cases of murder, kidnapping, and blackmail. Vera is obsessive about her work and faces the world with caustic wit, guile and courage.
Vera

Art is an independent film-maker with big ideas... sadly nobody will listen to these ideas, with the exception of his best friend Jones. The series follows Art as his overactive imagination turns every day into a cinematic classic, with homages to 'Top Gun' and 'The Shining' to name but a few.
My Life in Film

Ghost Squad, known as G.S.5 for its third series, was a crime drama series about an elite division of Scotland Yard that ran between 1961 and 1964. Each episode the Ghost Squad would investigate cases that fell outside the scope of normal police work. Despite the show and characters being fictional, an actual division did exist within the Metropolitan Police Service at the time. Inspiration for the series was taken from a book of the same name, written by John Gosling — a retired police officer and former member of the team. Although the real-life squad only operated in London, the fictionalised team travelled internationally; however — as was typical of the time — most foreign locations were actually a combination of stock footage and sets at Independent Artists Studio at Beaconsfield and Elstree Studios. Music was by Philip Green. The show was produced by ITC Entertainment, along with Rank Organisation TV and ATV. It was the first ITC show filmed to fit the one hour time-slot — setting the trend for the majority of ITC's future output. Another common ITC trait was to feature an American, in this case Michael Quinn, in a leading role so as to increase the chances of international sales. At 6' 3", Quinn often towered over his co-workers. This was especially noticeable in the first series title sequence showing him walking through a crowd walking in the opposite direction. He frequently smoked in the show as did many others. The second series had a different title sequence and Neil Hallett sometimes replaced Quinn. Hallett looked more like a spy while Quinn looked a bit like a playboy. Quinn was replaced by Australian actor, Ray Barrett in the third series. Ray Austin played Billy Clay in and was also Stunt Director on all series bringing the action to life. Austin went on to become a renowned TV director in Hollywood and the UK.






