June Brown

June Muriel Brown, MBE (born 16 February 1927) is an English actress, known for her role as Dot Cotton in the BBC soap opera EastEnders from 1985 onwards. In 2005, she won Best Actress at the Inside Soap Awards, and in the same year, also received the Lifetime Achievement award at the British Soap Awards. In 2009, she was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress, but lost out to Anna Maxwell Martin. She is only the second performer to receive a BAFTA nomination for their work in a soap opera (the first was Jean Alexander). She was awarded the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours for services to Drama and Charity. 2Early life and family Brown was born in Needham Market, Suffolk in 1927, the daughter of Louisa Ann (née Butler) and Henry William Melton Brown. She was one of five children, although her baby brother died of pneumonia in 1932, aged 15 days, and her elder sister, Marise, died in 1934, aged eight, from a meningitis-like illness. Other than English, she has Irish, Scottish, Italian and Sephardic Jewish descent from Oran, Algeria. On her maternal grandmother's side Brown is descended from the Jewish bare knuckle boxer Isaac Bitton. She was educated at St John's Church of England school in Ipswich and then won a scholarship to Ipswich High School where she passed the school certificate examination