Anna Wing

Anna Eva Lydia Catherine Wing, MBE (30 October 1914 – 7 July 2013) was an English actress who had a long career in television and theatre, but was best known for playing Lou Beale, the matriarch of the Beale family, in EastEnders. 2Personal life Wing was born in Hackney, London, and started out as an artist's model and later, during the Second World War, worked in East End hospitals. At age 30, she married the actor Peter Davey, by whom she had a son, actor-director Mark Wing-Davey, but the marriage ended in divorce after six years. Her seven years as the lover of Philip O'Connor, a surrealist writer and contemporary of Stephen Spender and Laurie Lee, saw her spend some time as a nursery teacher in West London. With her new lover she had a second son, Jon O'Connor. 2Career Wing is best known for portraying the Beale and Fowler family matriarch Lou Beale on EastEnders from the show's inception in February 1985, until the character was killed off in July 1988. She quit her role in the hit show as she was unhappy with the direction in which it was going, but later reflected that it may not have been the right decision. She made an earlier soap appearance in Market in Honey Lane for ATV in the late 1960s. She also had a role in the Doctor Who serial "Kinda" in 1982. Other TV credits include Dixon of Dock Green, Z-Cars, Play for Today and The Sweene