While Keith’s voice contributed to her success, it also gave a false impression of her background.
Keith (nee Hatfield) was from relatively humble stock. Born in Sutton, Surrey, in 1940, she grew up in Clapham, south London, in the thick of World War Two.
Her mother Connie worked as a hotel child entertainment organiser and was often away, so the young Penelope spent a lot of time with her grandparents.
Her father had left when she was very young and Connie later remarried, but although she took his surname, Keith wouldn’t talk about him.
Aged six, she went to a boarding school run by nuns, where the performing arts and elocution lessons were encouraged.
It became the happiest of times for the would-be actress.
“I apparently came home from school one day and sat in the bath and said to my mother that when I grow older I was going to be either a nun or an actress,” she told chat show host Michael Parkinson in 1977.
“She was a bit taken aback and said, ‘Darling, nuns can’t wear pretty clothes’. So I said, ‘Well, I’ll be an actress then.'”
