The British-born star enjoyed a decades-long career
Jean Marsh, the creator and star of the beloved 1970s series “Upstairs, Downstairs,” died Sunday of dementia at her home in London. She was 90.
Marsh’s close friend Michael Lindsay-Hogg confirmed her death and its cause to the New York Times.
“Upstairs, Downstairs” aired from 1971 to 1975 in England and 1974 to 1977 in the United States. The show was about the Bellamy family and the staff that kept their elegant townhome running. Marsh starred as Rose, the head parlor maid.
In 2010 Marsh decided to return to the show by way of a reboot. “At first, I wasn’t sure if it was a retrograde thing to do,” she told the Telegraph at the time. “But then I thought: am I being pompous? It was a wonderful part. I think Rose got into me as much as I got into Rose.”
The reboot took place only six years after the show’s original timeline of 1904-1930, but Marsh herself had naturally aged quite a few decades. When asked how the show intended to explain her clear jump in age, Marsh simply said, “Let’s not go down that road.”
Marsh came of age in a London that was war-torn and tired; as she told the outlet, her family lived in a home made up of two rooms (and none of them was a bathroom or a kitchen).
