Gwyneth Powell

Gwyneth Powell (born 15 November 1946 in Levenshulme, Manchester) is an English actress who is most known for her portrayal of headmistress Bridget McCluskey in the BBC television series Grange Hill for eleven series between 1981 and 1991.

Career

Powell originally trained as a teacher at Goldsmiths, University of London, but instead chose to act in repertory theatre. Her first major television role was in the 1971 LWT dystopian drama series, "The Guardians". She was a regular, if minor, player in many television dramas until being cast in Grange Hill, in which she played the "firm but fair" headmistress Bridget ("The Midget") McClusky for eleven years. Of her role, she said in 2008,

Eventually, however, Powell wanted to pursue other interests and gave the Grange Hill producers and writers a year to write McClusky out of the series. She bought the rights to E. M. Delafield's Diary of a Provincial Lady and adapted it as a self-financed one-woman show in Edinburgh, also touring the production.

Since then, Powell has appeared in other television programmes such as Heartbeat, A Touch of Frost and Father Brown, and in 2008, Echo Beach.

In 2009, using archive footage, coupled with some newly-recorded lines, Powell reprised her Grange Hill role as Mrs. McClusky for a cameo appearance in an episode of Ashes to Ashes, set in 1982....
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