
Acting
Gillian Taylforth
Born
1955-08-14 (71)
Place of birth
Islington, London, UK
Known for
Acting
Credits
51 titles
Gillian Taylforth is an English actress best known for her role as Kathy Beale on the BBC soap opera EastEnders.
Known for
4.3The everyday lives of working-class residents of Albert Square, a traditional Victorian square of terrace houses surrounding a park in the East End of London's Walford borough.
EastEnders
1985
6.2Drama series about the staff and patients at Holby City Hospital's emergency department, charting the ups and downs in their personal and professional lives.
Casualty
1986
8.0Talented chefs battle it out against the clock, creating delicious dishes in 20 minutes
Ready, Steady, Cook
1994
6.6Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.
Play for Today
1970
7.2Roguish comedy drama following the misadventures of small-time crook Arthur Daley.
Minder
1979
6.8The daily lives of the men and women at Sun Hill Police Station as they fight crime on the streets of London. From bomb threats to armed robbery and drug raids to the routine demands of policing this ground-breaking series focuses as much on crime as it does on the personal lives of its characters.
The Bill
1984
Film credits
1990s · 2 titles
4.8All of the Doctor's incarnations are in crisis when The Rani creates a time-loop in the East-end of London in this 30th Anniversary Special.
Doctor Who: Dimensions in Time
1993
Alice no longer expects a knight on a white charger to enter her life. Then she meets Leo. For the first time Alice begins to understand love and, for a while, it seems that she is going to live happily ever after.
Big Cat
1998
1980s · 4 titles
7.2In the late 1970s, Cockney crime boss Harold Shand, a gangster trying to become a legitimate property mogul, has big plans to get the American Mafia to bankroll his transformation of a derelict area of London into the possible venue for a future Olympic Games. However, a series of bombings targets his empire on the very weekend the Americans are in town. Shand is convinced there is a traitor in his organization, and sets out to eliminate the rat in typically ruthless fashion.
The Long Good Friday
1980
NRKaren and her older sister Sandra both take a trip to Brighton due to unforeseen circumstances.
Ties
1982
6.0Unemployed youngsters spend their days at the roller disco, circling round and round, before being called to take up low-paid jobs as they become available. For others, it's a subsistence existence of vending machine food, video games, with sex and drugs freely available as distractions.
Stars of the Roller State Disco
1984
NRDavid Scarboro, who played Mark Fowler in EastEnders (1985), fell to his death at Beachy Head in 1988. Simon, his younger brother, presents this tribute, featuring David's achievements as a young actor as well as his problems.
My Brother David
1989
1970s · 4 titles
5.0Jimmy is a talented young boxer. Every punch he throws is eagerly watched by his trainer, and resented by his girlfriend. His parents, however, aren't particularly interested – until a large car and what appears to be a handsome contract arrive at the door.
Fast Hands
1976
NRAspiring dancer Phyllis Dixey makes her name as a stripper.
The One and Only Phyllis Dixey
1978
8.0Teenagers Sandy and Alan are keen motorcyclists, but while Sandy insists on getting proper training, Alan refuses, even though this makes him twenty times more likely to have an accident.
20 Times More Likely
1978
NREleanor seems normal enough to her parents and teachers. Why then has she disappeared?
Eleanor
1974
Series credits
4.3The everyday lives of working-class residents of Albert Square, a traditional Victorian square of terrace houses surrounding a park in the East End of London's Walford borough.
EastEnders
1985
4.3The everyday lives of working-class residents of Albert Square, a traditional Victorian square of terrace houses surrounding a park in the East End of London's Walford borough.
EastEnders
1985
4.3The everyday lives of working-class residents of Albert Square, a traditional Victorian square of terrace houses surrounding a park in the East End of London's Walford borough.
EastEnders
1985
4.3The everyday lives of working-class residents of Albert Square, a traditional Victorian square of terrace houses surrounding a park in the East End of London's Walford borough.
EastEnders
1985
6.2Drama series about the staff and patients at Holby City Hospital's emergency department, charting the ups and downs in their personal and professional lives.
Casualty
1986
6.2Drama series about the staff and patients at Holby City Hospital's emergency department, charting the ups and downs in their personal and professional lives.
Casualty
1986
8.0Talented chefs battle it out against the clock, creating delicious dishes in 20 minutes
Ready, Steady, Cook
1994
6.6Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.
Play for Today
1970
7.2Roguish comedy drama following the misadventures of small-time crook Arthur Daley.
Minder
1979
6.8The daily lives of the men and women at Sun Hill Police Station as they fight crime on the streets of London. From bomb threats to armed robbery and drug raids to the routine demands of policing this ground-breaking series focuses as much on crime as it does on the personal lives of its characters.
The Bill
1984
5.2The daily soap that follows the loves, lives and misdemeanours of a group of people living in the Chester village of Hollyoaks where anything could, and frequently does, happen...
Hollyoaks
1995
5.0Celebrity Big Brother is a British reality television game show in which a number of celebrity contestants live in an isolated house trying to avoid being evicted by the public with the aim of winning a large cash prize being donated to the winner's nominated charity at the end of the run.
Celebrity Big Brother
2001
7.3New Tricks is a British comedy-drama that follows the work of the fictional Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad of the Metropolitan Police Service. Originally led by Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman, it is made up of retired police officers who have been recruited to reinvestigate unsolved crimes.
New Tricks
2004
The Alan Titchmarsh Show is a British daytime chat show presented by Alan Titchmarsh. It was first broadcast on ITV on 3 September 2007 and currently airs on weekday afternoons. The show's main focus is the "Best of British" theme with many of the shows' segments focusing on fashion, health, nature, cookery and animals.
The Alan Titchmarsh Show
2007
5.3An Audience with... is a British entertainment television show produced by London Weekend Television, in which a host, usually a singer or comedian, performs for an invited audience of celebrity guests, interspersed with questions from the audience, in a light hearted revue/tribute style.
An Audience with...
1978
5.3V Graham Norton was an entertainment programme shown on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom starring Graham Norton, broadcast every weeknight as a successor to the weekly So Graham Norton. It aired from 6 May 2002 to 26 December 2003. It featured celebrities who chatted with Graham and became involved in studio games which were usually laden with sexual innuendo. The studio games were later featured on the clip show Nortonland in 2007 on digital channel Challenge. The show featured a 'webcam', a roving television camera which was randomly situated in a different place in the UK each week and which followed Graham's instructions and allowed him to interact with the public live. The feature was made technically possible using digital microwave link technology provided by Rear Window Television with the 'spontaneous' webcam feature always produced as a full quality Outside Broadcast, before being made to look like a traditional webcam at the studios.
V Graham Norton
2002
6.5The place to catch up on all things Celebrity Big Brother UK! Join Rylan Clark-Neal for the best mix of exclusive clips, news and reactions from the house, plus celebrity guests and live debates in the studio.
Celebrity Big Brother's Bit on the Side
2011
7.1Big laughs, big stars and big surprises. Michael's up to mischief with a host of celeb guests, whether they're willing or not. It's feelgood family fun.
Michael McIntyre's Big Show
2016
5.4Footballers' Wives is a British television drama surrounding the fictional Premier League Association football club Earls Park F.C., its players, and their wives. It was broadcast on the ITV network from 8 January 2002 to 14 April 2006. The show began with a multi-lateral focus on a variety of different types of relationships explored; however, from the third series onward, the primary focus was on a complex love triangle between Tanya Turner, Amber Gates and Conrad Gates.
Footballers' Wives
2002
5.4Footballers' Wives is a British television drama surrounding the fictional Premier League Association football club Earls Park F.C., its players, and their wives. It was broadcast on the ITV network from 8 January 2002 to 14 April 2006. The show began with a multi-lateral focus on a variety of different types of relationships explored; however, from the third series onward, the primary focus was on a complex love triangle between Tanya Turner, Amber Gates and Conrad Gates.
Footballers' Wives
2002
7.0Hi-de-Hi! is a British sitcom set in Maplins, a fictional holiday camp, during 1959 and 1960, and was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, who also wrote Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum amongst others. It aired on the BBC from 1980 to 1988. The series revolved around the lives of the camp's management and entertainers, most of them struggling actors or has-beens. The inspiration was the experience of writers Perry and Croft: after being demobilised from the army, Perry was a Redcoat at Butlin's, Pwllheli during the holiday season. The series gained large audiences and won a BAFTA as Best Comedy Series in 1984. In 2004, it came 40th in Britain's Best Sitcom and in a 2008 poll on Channel 4, 'Hi-de-Hi!" was voted the 35th most popular comedy catchphrase.
Hi-de-Hi!
1980
7.2Notable as the first British series to feature a female police officer (predating Juliet Bravo by four months), Detective Inspector Maggie Forbes raises her teenage son while navigating a male-dominated police force following the murder of her police commissioner husband.
The Gentle Touch
1980
7.8James Shelley, an educated, sardonic, permanently unemployed "professional freelance layabout," has many battles with authority, the tax-man, his landlady, and his girlfriend Fran.
Shelley
1979
7.4Crime drama series following the investigations of DCI Red Metcalfe.
Messiah
2001
6.8Operation Good Guys is a British mockumentary, a fly-on-the-wall documentary series about an elite police unit's bid to snare one of Britain's most powerful crime lords.Blurring the line between fact and fiction, it witnesses, on camera, the total breakdown, professionally and personally, of the Operation Good Guys team. Throughout the operation, The 'Good Guys' have an unfortunate habit of embroiling into their calamitous world some of the country's best-known celebrities, from actors and footballers, to TV presenters and even the odd ex-convict.
Operation Good Guys
1997
6.5The Knock is a British television drama series, created by Anita Bronson and broadcast on ITV from 1994 to 2000, which portrayed the activities of customs officers from Her Majesty's Customs and Excise. The series derived its name from the distinctive 'knock knock knock' command used over the radio to synchronise a raid.
The Knock
1994
4.0Alan Carr's Celebrity Ding Dong was an entertainment show on Channel 4, presented by Alan Carr. During the first series, voice-over commentary in between rounds on the scores is provided by Leslie Phillips. From Series 2, the announcer is Peter Dickson. Season was released onto DVD in 2008. Due to the success of Alan Carr: Chatty Man it has been announced that the show would not return for a third series.
Alan Carr's Celebrity Ding Dong
2008
6.0An anthology series of six contemporary plays from writers at relatively early stages in their careers.
Plays for Britain
1976
7.0Thundercloud is a 1979 British television comedy created and written by Ian Mackintosh. Produced by Yorkshire Television for ITV, it was significantly more lighthearted than Mackintosh's prior series Warship and The Sandbaggers. Lieutenant Commander ‘Monty’ Morgan – a stickler for forms – and his shipmates operate aboard the shore-based HMS Thundercloud, a secret Royal Navy station on the Yorkshire coast during World War II, apparently far enough away from HQ to merit a remarkable degree of autonomy. In fact, the Admiralty were convinced that the station was actually a destroyer in the North Sea!
Thundercloud
1979
8.5Some of Walford’s biggest stars join Stacey Dooley to relive classic scenes, share behind-the-scenes stories and reveal secrets that are normally kept under wraps.
EastEnders: Secrets from the Square
2020
NRThis brief series (12 episodes of 10 or 15 minutes each screened over a three week period) followed the adventures of a family pursuing the English football team around France during the World Cup. The series was written during filming to acknowledge the success or failure of the team in the competition.
Lost In France
1998
No synopsis available yet.
Behind The Screen
1988
7.0Follows the humorous struggles of workers in a London clothing factory.
The Rag Trade
1977
6.6Struggling to find a job in her northern home town, Jane is convinced that she is ugly, boring, and completely useless. But after one blazing row with her parents too many, Jane decides to move to London, where she finds sex, adventure, friendship and fun driving a red London bus.
Jane Hall
2006
7.0Sink or Swim is a BBC TV sitcom starring Peter Davison as Brian Webber, who lives in a flat above a London petrol station, and trying to make his way in the world, thus far with limited success. His girlfriend, Sonia, is a very practical young woman who is passionate only about things like vegetarianism and ecology. When Brian's younger brother, Steve, arrives seeking a place to stay, his lazy, cynical, noisy "Northern lout" attitude disrupts Brian's already messy life. Like Only Fools and Horses, Sink or Swim was filmed in Bristol doubling for London. It ran for three series between 4 December 1980 and 14 October 1982, and was written by Alex Shearer, who later wrote the Nicholas Lyndhurst sitcom 'The Two of Us' (1986-90, LWT). The first two years of production overlapped as Davison was also starring as the Fifth Doctor in Doctor Who, which imposed constraints on recording schedules.
Sink or Swim
1980
1.5DS Mary Jane Croft runs the under-resourced Missing Persons Unit.
Missing
2009
On Safari was a children's game show series set in the jungle that was produced by TVS, and aired on the ITV network for four series from 1982 until 1984. The show was hosted by Christopher Biggins and for the first season, was co-hosted by future EastEnders actress Gillian Taylforth. Her sister Kim Taylforth also appreaed in the early episodes of season 1. All four series were recorded at the TVS studios in Southampton; although the first series was recorded in 1981, when the studios were still owned by Southern Television. TVS rented the studio space from Southern for the first series and in several editions cameras are seen bearing a generic On Safari nameplate rather than that of the production company.
On Safari
1982
NRThe House That Jack Built follows the lives of property developer Jack Squire and his dysfunctional family.
The House That Jack Built
2002
The story of a group of builders in postwar Britain.
Big Jim and the Figaro Club
1981
NRMichael and Clare McCready are an estranged father and daughter who are reunited through their work as private investigators within an Irish community in Kilburn, London, after Clare drops out of university and fails to find another job.
McCready and Daughter
2001

