Maud Grimes, the mother-in-law from hell in television's Coronation Street, was tough, rough, domineering, embitteredly disabled and altogether not an obvious candidate for socialite of the year. The actress Elizabeth Bradley, who died on October 30th aged 78 after playing the character for six years and 476 episodes, was charming, invariably courteous, bubbly, mentally sharp and physically active to the last.
Unlike the downmarket Maud, she was also the daughter of a senior civil servant, Sir John Abraham, who was deputy under-secretary at the Air Ministry from 1940 until he died in Winston Churchill's private plane when it crashed in 1945.
Elizabeth Bradley, who successfully played so many roles unlike herself, was trained in the hard school of repertory theatre, at Bexhill, Bradford and Tunbridge Wells. Late in life, she also took her place at the National Theatre and the Royal Court.
No one in her family had worked in show business, but Sir John, who had come to London from farming stock in Macclesfield, enjoyed the theatre, and delighted in taking his daughter to any performance remotely suitable for a child; from those trips her interest in theatre grew.
During the second World War, she served as a nurse. She studied at the Webber Douglas School of acting, and then went into repertory, where she met her future husband, the actor Gareth Adams, who appeared with her in several productions.
She stopped acting in the 1950s to raise her children, although, in the mid-1960s, she appeared in the Garrick Theatre production of the farce, Thark, with Kathleen Harrison.
When her husband died suddenly in 1978, Elizabeth Bradley threw herself into a full-time stage and television career. She was in the police series Z Cars and Softly Softly, and in a number of notable productions, including Momento Mori and The Men's Room, as well as Casualty, Shine On Harvey Moon, The Nine Tailors, Dr Finlay's Casebook and Juliet Bravo.
She starred in David Storey's play Home, with John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, when Dandy Nichols was taken ill, and she always gave distinctive and memorable life to her supporting roles.
She rejoined Coronation Street in 1993 as Maud Grimes, having previously played two small roles in the series, Mrs Thornley (1971) and Councillor Margaret Adams (1978).
Through Maud, Elizabeth Bradley expressed the frustrations of being old and immobile. The actress also movingly revealed her character's secret shame after accepting a proposal from Percy Sugden. On a trip to Normandy in 1994 for the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings, Maud showed her daughter Maureen the grave of an American serviceman and explained that he was her real father. On learning this Percy called off the wedding, not able to accept that Maud had been unfaithful to her husband, a British serviceman.
The cantankerous battleaxe did all she could to prevent Maureen from marrying Reg Holdsworth but eventually bowed to the inevitable. When Reg bought the cornershop as a business for him and Maureen to run together, it soon became apparent that Maud wanted to be in on the act. This led to Reg's decision to take a job at Firman's Freezers and leave Maureen and Maud in charge.
Last year Maud was written out of the series when she left the Street to move into sheltered accommodation.
Elizabeth Bradley's last stage role was as Alan Bennett's mother in the playwright's The Lady In The Van, which starred Dame Maggie Smith; her films included An American Werewolf In London (1981) and Dennis Potter's Brimstone And Treacle (1982).
She always put her resurgence as an actress down to a friend's remark after the death of her husband. He told her Gareth had always said she would make it to the top. "I wanted to justify that and it helped ease the pain" she said.
She is survived by her three children, Brad, Johanna and Sodge.
Elizabeth Bradley: born 1922; died, October 2000