Belfast star of Bread and Angela's Ashes Eileen Pollock dies aged 73

Eileen Pollock, the actor best known for playing Lilo Lill in '80s sitcom Bread, has died at the age of 73.

Her death was confirmed by her family, who said she died peacefully in her London home on December 19th.

The Northern Irish star played the mistress of Freddie Boswell (Ronald Forfar) in the comedy series about a Liverpudlian family, which aired from 1986 to 1991.

Oother notable roles include Angela's Ashes, Four Days in July and the Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman film Far and Away.

Pollock trained as a translator, once joking that she "could have been a Eurocrat with a Porsche in every European capital city".

Her agents said she was “truly a powerhouse of an actor, with huge generosity and spirit”.

Pollock convinced the producers of Bread during auditions that her character should be Irish, rather than Liverpudlian as they had originally intended.

“The reason I said that was because I had been trying out my Liverpool accent on the taxi driver on the way to the audition and he asked me which part of Australia I came from,” she once said. “I thought then that I'd be better off sticking to what I knew.”

“People will always remember me as Lilo Lill and it's wonderful. I like it when someone says in a supermarket, ‘You know who you remind me of, don't take offence, that tart from Bread’,” she joked.

Pollock’s co-star in the play Women on the Verge of HRT, Dan Gordon, said of the actress:

“She was great fun and the one thing I remember is that I never saw her angry. I never once saw her cross with anyone. She was an extraordinary woman, a beautiful person.”

At the end of such a hard year, we regret to announce another sad loss to our ANA family - the wonderful Eileen Pollock - or Polly to her friends pic.twitter.com/ExzE5fLyUZ

— ANA (@anaactors) December 21, 2020