British actress Anna Massey dies at 73

LONDON - Anna Massey, the member of an acting dynasty whose roles ranged from lonely spinsters to Margaret Thatcher, has died. She was 73.

Massey died on Saturday after a battle with cancer, with her husband and son at her side, her agent Pippa Markham said on Monday.

The actress was born in 1937 into a performing family - her father was Canadian actor Raymond Massey and her mother British actress Adrianne Allen. Her brother Daniel Massey also became an actor, and her godfather was director John Ford.

Massey made her West End stage debut at 17 in The Reluctant Debutante and her film debut in Ford's 1958 police procedural Gideon's Day.

She had roles in films including Michael Powell's classic chiller Peeping Tom, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake is Missing, Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy and the 2002 adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest, in which she played the comic governess Miss Prism.

Massey worked most frequently in television and was a stalwart of British period dramas, often cast as a waspish spinster or maiden aunt. She appeared in TV adaptations of Anthony Trollope's The Pallisers, Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist and many others.

In 2006, she played former prime minister Margaret Thatcher in the TV drama Pinochet in Suburbia.