Saturday 24 February 2018

Vicar of Dibley and Notting Hill star Emma Chambers dies aged 53 from 'natural causes' as co-star Hugh Grant leads tributes to 'hilarious and very warm' actress

  • Emma Chambers has died aged 53, her agent confirmed, as Dawn French mourned the loss of a 'bright spark'
  • Chambers was best known for playing the warm but dim Alice Tinker alongside French in the BBC sitcom 
  • She also played Honey - Hugh Grant's sister - alongside Julia Roberts in the 1999 sitcom Notting Hill 
  • Hugh Grant praised his co-star as a 'warm person' and a 'brilliant actress' in a Twitter tribute this evening

  • The Vicar of Dibley actress Emma Chambers has died of natural causes aged 53, her agent has confirmed.
    Best known for playing Alice Tinker in the BBC sitcom which starred Dawn French, the Doncaster-born star also featured in Notting Hill alongside Julia Roberts. 
    Notting Hill co-star Hugh Grant led tributes to her this evening, calling her a 'warm person' and 'brilliant actress'. 
    Dawn French said: 'Emma was a very bright spark and the most loyal & loving friend anyone could wish for. I will miss her very much.' 
    Her agent said Chambers, who died from natural causes on Wednesday evening, would be 'greatly missed'.

    The Vicar of Dibley actress Emma Chambers has died of natural causes aged 53, her agent has confirmed. She was best known for playing Alice Tinker in the BBC sitcom which starred Dawn French (right), the Doncaster-born star also featured in Notting Hill alongside Julia Roberts

    The Vicar of Dibley actress Emma Chambers has died of natural causes aged 53, her agent has confirmed. She was best known for playing Alice Tinker in the BBC sitcom which starred Dawn French (right), the Doncaster-born star also featured in Notting Hill alongside Julia Roberts

    Her agent said Chambers, who died from natural causes on Wednesday evening, would be 'greatly missed'. A statement said: 'Emma created a wealth of characters and an immense body of work. She brought laughter and joy to many'
    Her agent said Chambers, who died from natural causes on Wednesday evening, would be 'greatly missed'. A statement said: 'Emma created a wealth of characters and an immense body of work. She brought laughter and joy to many'

    A statement said: 'Emma created a wealth of characters and an immense body of work. She brought laughter and joy to many.'   
    Jon Plowman, executive producer of The Vicar of Dibley and former head of comedy at the BBC, said: 'This is a sad day. Emma was a gifted comic actress who made any part she played - no matter how ditzy or other worldly - look easy.
    'To create a much loved comic character as she did, you have to be every bit as bright and clever as Emma always was.
    'She was great fun to work with and adored by all the cast and crew of Vicar of Dibley. She will be missed and our deepest condolences go out to her family and friends.' 
    Chambers played alongside French from 1994 to 2007 in the much loved sitcom and won the British Comedy Award for Best Actress for her performance in 1998.
    Once asked if she resembled her portrayal of the dippy Alice Tinker in real life, Chambers rejected the comparison with the words: 'I'm a cynical old bitch.'

    Chambers is pictured during her appearance in the 1999 romantic comedy Notting Hill, in which she portrayed Hugh Grant's younger sister
    In Notting Hill, Chambers played Honey, Hugh Grant's eccentric younger sister and the romantic interest of Rhys Ifans' character Spike.  
    Chambers is pictured during her appearance in the 1999 romantic comedy Notting Hill, in which she portrayed Hugh Grant's younger sister

    Her friend and fellow broadcaster Emma Freud, who is married to director Richard Curtis tweeted: 'Our beautiful friend Emma Chambers has died at the age of 53. We're very very sad.
    'She was a great, great comedy performer, and a truly fine actress. And a tender, sweet, funny, unusual, loving human being.'
    Vicar of Dibley co-writer Paul Mayhew-Archer, 65, said he was 'devastated' by her passing, which was said by her agent to be of natural causes.
    'I loved working with her, she was stunning,' he said. 'I used to love watching her going over her lines in rehearsal, she would read them to herself and try to find the perfect delivery.
    'I am devastated, she was a key part of the Vicar of Dibley. It is one of those strange things, because when you start working on something, you think it is one thing and it becomes something quite different.
    'Alice became completely central to the piece, it was just perfect.
    'Most sitcoms have an idiot of some sort but she managed to make her idiot completely different, it was amazing.
    'The last time I saw her was the last episode, all of my memories are to do with the programme, her passing was so sudden.' 
    James Dreyfus, who starred alongside Chambers in Notting Hill paid tribute on Twitter.
    He said: 'RIP the wonderful and talented Emma Chambers. Unique & unspeakably funny. Too young. Thoughts with her family.'  

    A statement from her agency read: ‘Emma created a wealth of characters and an immense body of work. She brought laughter and joy to many.' She is pictured with Dawn French on the Vicar of Dibley

    A statement from her agency read: 'Emma created a wealth of characters and an immense body of work. She brought laughter and joy to many.' She is pictured right with Dawn French on the Vicar of Dibley and right in How Do You Want Me? 

    Chambers (left, in the Vicar of Dibley) was in the theater for about ten years before her major break in television. She has appeared in some stage productions including Tartuffe and Invisible Friends
    Chambers (left, in the Vicar of Dibley) was in the theater for about ten years before her major break in television. She has appeared in some stage productions including Tartuffe and Invisible Friends

    Chambers, who lived in Lymington, Hampshire, is survived by her husband, fellow actor Ian Dunn, an actor in the daytime show Doctors.  
    She tied the knot in 1991 at a low-key ceremony in New Forest and described her marriage as 'glorious' in an interview in January this year.
    'My wedding was very short. I was playing the lead in an Alan Ayckbourn play and was only given one day off,' she told Hitberry magazine.

    My sister, Sarah Doukas, is a model agent and one of her bookers made me a dress which cost £180. I still look at it in my wardrobe and think it is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.
    'The wedding itself was in the New Forest. I loved it because I had never had a big party before as we had always been on the move when I was a child.'  
    Former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson recalled Chambers being 'very funny'.
    He wrote on Twitter: 'I'm sad about Emma Chambers. Knew her when she was a kid in Doncaster. She was very funny.'  

    Prior to starring alongside Dawn French, Chambers trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts and was a classmate of EastEnders star Ross Kemp.
    Starting out in smaller roles in TV shows such as The Bill, she also portrayed Helen Yardley in Simon Nye's sitcom How Do You Want Me?
    She also provided voice performances for The Wind in the Willows film and the TV series Little Robots.  
    In 2000 she took on the role of Martha Thompson in Take a Girl Like You, a television drama based on the novel by Kingsley Amis. 
    Tributes for the actress poured in from celebrities today, with Jodie Marsh tweeting: ‘Such terribly sad news about Emma Chambers. Notting Hill is one of my favourite films of all time and she is so stunningly superb in it. That film makes me laugh & cry, as does her performance in it. RIP Emma.’ 
    Fellow comic actors praised her too, with Citizen Khan star Adil Ray tweeting: 'So sad. Emma Chambers was absolutely masterful. Very funny, she made the daftness believable. The joke coda with @Dawn-French in Dibley required great skill and Emma just nailed it. She made it. We say this a lot, but Emma IS a great loss to our screens.' 
    Fans of Chambers are commemorating her using the hashtag #ICantBelieveItsNotButter, a reference to one of her most famous scenes in the Vicar of Dibley. 
    In an exchange with Geraldine, Alice baffles the vicar by telling her that she can't believe some spread she bought in Kirkenden is not I Can't Believe it's Not Butter. 
    The character's celebrated dimness was compounded when Alice married the intellectually challenged Hugo Horton, who was played by James Edward Fleet. 

    Emma Chambers plays Alice Tinker at her wedding to Hugo Horton, who is played by James Fleet. The couple's collective lack of common sense was a celebrated source of the show's humour 

    Emma Chambers plays Alice Tinker at her wedding to Hugo Horton, who is played by James Fleet. The couple's collective lack of common sense was a celebrated source of the show's humour

    'It's a very tiny brain you're housing in there, isn't it?' 


    Alice Tinker's inability to grasp basic jokes was a celebrated fixture of every Vicar of Dibley episode.
    The character's dimness was exposed in regular, post-credit scenes in which Geraldine Granger would excitedly tell a joke, only for her best friend to totally miss the point.
    One such exchange went like this: 
    Geraldine: So there's this man vicar...
    Alice Tinker: Oh!
    Geraldine Granger: Yeah. And he's playing golf with his friend, John.
    Alice Tinker: John.
    Geraldine Granger: John, yup. And John misses a three foot putt.
    Alice Tinker: Oh, dear.
    Geraldine Granger: Yeah. And he says, 'Damn it! Missed the bugger!' and the vicar tuts and he says, 'John, you say that once more and God will open up the heavens and send a thunderbolt down to strike you dead.' Well, the next thing that happens, John misses a two foot putt, and he says, 'Damn it! Missed the bugger!'
    Alice Tinker: Uh-oh.
    Geraldine Granger: Yes. So the heavens open, a great big thunderbolt comes down and strikes the vicar dead. And God says, 'Damn it! Missed the bugger!'
    Alice Tinker: No, no-no, that, that can't be right, can it? Because God wouldn't miss, 'cause he's God. I mean even though he was standing really close he'd still hit the right one, and he certainly wouldn't swear.
    Geraldine Granger: It's a very tiny brain you're housing in there, isn't it?
    Episodes always ended with an exchange between Alice and a baffled Vicar of Dibley 
    Episodes always ended with an exchange between Alice and a baffled Vicar of Dibley 

    In another, the vicar is utterly baffled by Alice's profound sadness over the death of a budgie that never existed. 
    Geraldine Granger: So, what do you call a budgie that's been run over by a lawnmower?
    Alice Tinker: I don't know, what do you call a budgie that's been run over by a lawnmower?
    Geraldine Granger: Shredded tweet.
    Alice Tinker: So the budgie's dead, then?
    Geraldine Granger: Yes, I should think so. It's shredded tweet.
    Alice Tinker: Poor little thing. It didn't even see the lawnmower coming. How could it know that death was just round the corner?
    Geraldine Granger: Alice, look, I'm not going to tell you these jokes any more if you're going to keep on responding like this. It's not a real budgie, okay? It's not a real lawnmower; it's just a joke.
    Alice Tinker: So the budgie's not dead?
    Geraldine Granger: No, it never got born.
    Alice Tinker: Never got born?
    Geraldine Granger: No.
    Alice Tinker: Poor little thing. Oh, so much beauty. So much potential; it never got born. Never saw the light of the sun, or felt the gentle rustling of the breeze through its feathers. Never went 'tweekle, tweekle, tweekle, give me my Cottle Fizz'.
    Geraldine Granger: Get out now. Go on, get out!


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