Stage and screen actor known for playing battle-axe aunts, village gossips and servantsWhen Mel Brooks visited the film set of Up at the Villa (2000), in which his wife, Anne Bancroft, was starring, he proclaimed Barbara Hicks, who has died aged 89, the funniest woman he had ever met. This stalwart character actor, always lodged some way down any cast list as if to prove the truth of Stanislavski's dictum that there …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:36PM on November 6, 2013