Prunella Scales absolutely deplores the categorization of actors as either "serious" or "comic." To her, everyone in the profession is simply an actor and, as such, shouldn’t be pigeonholed. It is her assertion that these stereotypes have kept viewers from witnessing great dramatic performances from actors mainly known for comedy.

"One of the reasons I wanted to be an actress was because it gave me a chance to play people infinitely more interesting than I am and say things that are infinitely more witty and entertaining than anything I could ever think of myself."
-Prunella Scales on herself

She has a point. After all, she is best known for her masterful comic turn as Sybil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers. Those twelve episodes - a tiny portion of her working life - clearly defined her as a "comic" actress. Yet as you will see, there is much more to this wonderfully talented woman.

Prunella Scales was born Prunella Margaret Rumney Illingsworth on 22 June, 1932 in Sutton Abingers, Surrey. Her mother, Catherine Scales, was an actress and Prunella took her last name when she followed in her footsteps. Prunella was a quiet, studious child who grew up in a farmhouse with only books, a record player and a radio for entertainment. Thanks to this environment she became quite scholarly and a voracious reader. She was educated at a prestigious boarding school for girls in Eastbourne and at seventeen went to study at the Old Vic Theatre School. It was then off to New York for more study at the Herbert Berghof Studios with the legendary teacher Uta Hagen. Given this background, it’s understandable why she has become legendary for agonizing over every last detail of her characters. Like many actors of her generation Prunella developed an ability to do a wide range of characters by appearing in repertory theatre. She played part after part in a variety of productions. This experience would help her hone her craft and come in handy when her career began to blossom. The theatre also became a passion to which she has returned often during the course of her working life.

Prunella’s early television performances included appearances as waitresses and barmaids, causing her to joke once that she’s going to call the first volume of her autobiography Familiar Trays. She played Eileen Hughes on the long-running soap Coronation Street and in 1963 teamed up with Richard Briers for a sitcom entitled Marriage Lines. The show had been written with Briers in mind but it made a star of Prunella as well.

She played Kate Starling, a young wife who loves her new husband but becomes increasingly frustrated by domestic servitude. Her husband, on the other hand, also misses the bond with the lads. They suffer through the normal problems that plague young couples, but manage to make a success of their marriage. During the course of the series they also become the parents of two children. The show was an enormous success and also adapted into a radio series that ran for twenty-six episodes. Perhaps part of the reason for Prunella’s success as Kate was due to the fact that part of the plotlines reflected her own experiences. The same year Marriage Lines debuted she married the actor Timothy West wearing a hat borrowed from the wife of her future 'Fawlty' co-star Andrew Sachs. During the show’s fifth season, Kate’s pregnancy was written in to accommodate Prunella’s own pregnancy. Their son Sam was born in June of 1966 and is now carving out his own career as a successful actor. (Among other things, he appeared as a newlywed who rows with his wife while on their Parisian honeymoon in an episode of As Time Goes By.)

A few years later Prunella would play another wife - one who was very different from Kate Starling. Sybil Fawlty is demanding, shrewish, loud and with a look that her husband Basil believes can kill a man at ten paces. She can stop her husband cold just by saying his name and has this uncanny ability of knowing exactly when he’s trying to pull one over on her. Yet Basil still schemes, only to get caught and face the wrath of Sybil.

It is easy to give John Cleese and co-writer Connie Booth the lion’s share of the credit for Fawlty’s success, but Prunella’s contribution to the show simply cannot be overestimated. Cleese and Booth had written Sybil one way, but during rehearsals Prunella was doing the character in a different manner. Cleese and Booth soon realized that what Prunella was doing was better.

Her main contribution was the laugh. That braying sound Basil described as "someone machine-gunning a seal" was developed by Prunella and became one of Sybil’s most memorable trademarks. It is also a tribute to Prunella’s skill that she took two words and turned them into one of British comedy’s most famous catchphrases. Who can forget the sight of her sitting up in bed, eating bonbons and talking to Audrey on the phone, saying over and over again, "I know...I know..."? What makes her performance all the more amazing is that Prunella is nothing like Sybil. First of all, her normal speaking voice is almost a whisper and it’s impossible to imagine that ear-splitting "BASIL!" coming from her mouth. She’s also a very mild-mannered woman. It’s hard to conceive of her going after anyone with an umbrella as she did in one of Fawlty’s best scenes.

Yet somehow this seemingly timid, serious woman created one of comedy’s greatest shrews. Cleese once said the key to Basil is that he is absolutely terrified of Sybil and Prunella certainly makes you believe it. The beauty of her performance is that you also believe her those times when she’s all sweetness and light, pacifying a guest after Basil has made a mess of things.

Included in those twelve episodes are more priceless moments than one can count. When she thinks Basil may be betting on the horses against her wishes, she casually tells him, "you know what I’ll do if I find out."
"You’ll have to sew ‘em back on first" is Basil’s reply.
When she finds Basil unknowingly groping an attractive guest (he’s in the other room and thinks he’s turning on a light switch), she shows no signs of jealousy. "If you’re going to b>grope a girl, have the gallantry to stay in the room while you’re doing it" she says.

Sybil can match Basil during verbal altercations but she’s also not above showing her anger in a physical manner. Basil is the recipient of a number of slaps from his better half, but at least he can turn around and take out his aggression on Manuel.

Those twelve episodes made Prunella a sitcom icon, but all the attention paid to one single role is a bit frustrating to her. She says she’s had people come up and say things like, "Sybil Fawlty-you’ll never have a better part." Those sorts of remarks depress her and Prunella says if she truly believed them she’d "give up the business." She had a career before Fawlty Towers and she’s certainly had one since.

In between the two seasons of "Fawlty" she played a thieving wife in a short-lived sitcom called Mr. Big. She also did film work. In 1978 she appeared with Gregory Peck and Sir Laurence Olivier in the film The Boys from Brazil. That same year she joined an all-star cast including Dudley Moore, Peter Cook and Penelope Keith for an update of the Sherlock Holmes classic The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Like Dame Judi Dench, Prunella has also had great success playing Queens. In 1980 she took on a role that she would play on and off for many years. In a stage show entitled An Evening with Queen Victoria she embodied one of Britain’s most famous monarchs. In 2003 she did a television program called Waiting for Victoria, in which she performed some of Victoria’s writings and took viewers behind the scenes as she researched the role. She would play another monarch in 1992, giving a universally admired performance as Queen Elizabeth II in Alan Bennett’s 'A Question of Attribution'. She originated the role on stage, which was the first time a reigning monarch had been portrayed in a theatrical production. In 1992 a television movie of the play was made. The plot revolves around the activities of Sir Anthony Blunt, who works as Director of the Courtauld Institute and is also a Russian spy. Prunella’s perfomance is a tribute to her dedication to detail. She looks every inch the Queen and brings a humour and humanity to the role that you just suspect might be an accurate rendering of the real person.

So perfect was her personification of the Queen that when Prunella was awarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) Her Majesty said, "I suppose you think you ought to be doing this."

Prunella is also remembered for her role in the 1986 miniseries Mapp and Lucia. She stars alongside the formidable Geraldine McEwan as Miss Elizabeth Mapp, who fights for control of society life in the small town of Tilling-on-Sea. Though polite to each other on the surface, Mapp and Lucia are bitter rivals who engage in devious plots against each other.

Two years later, Prunella began her longest-lasting sitcom role. After Henry originated on radio, with Prunella playing Sarah France, a fortyish woman who has to cope with life after becoming a widow. She shares a house with her mother and teenage daughter, who do not help matters.

The series began as a radio program but was transferred to television and became enormously popular. Prunella’s gossipy, manipulative mother was played by the wonderful Joan Sanderson, who made a memorable appearance in Fawlty Towers as the hard-of-hearing Mrs. Richards.

Along with theatre work, Prunella’s other roles have encompassed period pieces (1997’s Emma, for which she insisted that her teeth be colored yellow to better suit her character of Mrs. Bates) to voice work for children’s animations. She also adores radio and teamed up with Hyacinth Bucket herself, Patricia Routledge, for a series called Ladies of Letters.

The series is a collection of letters sent between two women who meet at the wedding of the daughter of Irene, the character played by Prunella. The two dance a drunken tango and after they return to their respective homes they get to know each other well through correspondence.

For a number of years now Prunella has also appeared in a series of hugely successful television commercials for the supermarket chain Tesco.

Along with a very busy career, Prunella takes the time to teach acting workshops and has also directed stage productions. This is all part of her dedication to the craft she clearly loves.

So the next time you hear her infamous cry of "BASIL!" remember that there is much more to Prunella Scales than Sybil. Simply put, there are actors and then there are actors with a capital "A.”" The talented Prunella Scales is definitely one of the latter.