Julia McKenzie (born 17 February 1941, Enfield) is an English actress and theatre director.
McKenzie was born in Enfield, Middlesex, England, the daughter of Kathleen Rowe and Albion McKenzie.
In London's West End her performing credits include Guys and Dolls (Miss Adelaide) and Sweeney Todd (Mrs Lovett), winning the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for both, and Woman in Mind for which she received the Evening Standard Award for Best Actress. She has also appeared in Follies and Into the Woods. She appeared in Side By Side By Sondheim in the West End and on Broadway.
On television she was popular with British viewers as Hester in Fresh Fields and the sequel French Fields in the 1980s opposite Anton Rodgers, for which she was voted TV Times Favourite Female Comedy Performance for five consecutive years. She also appeared as Mrs Forthby in Blott on the Landscape. Film credits include Hotel du Lac, Shirley Valentine, Bright Young Things and These Foolish Things.
In 2007 she was reunited with Anton Rodgers (again as a husband and wife team) in the ITV comedy You Can Choose Your Friends. In Autumn 2007 she co-starred with Michael Gambon and Judi Dench in the BBC1 costume drama series Cranford, playing Mrs Forrester, a military widow of slender means, very attached to her Alderney cow Daisy. This role was mooted to be given to GI Moore before McKenzie got the part.
She was announced as the replacement for Geraldine McEwan as ITV's Miss Marple. On the announcement she said, "Just about everybody in the world knows about Miss Marple and has an opinion of what she should be like, so I’m under no illusions about the size of the task ahead. And I suppose I’ll have to remind myself how to knit!"
She is a radio performer with a long list of credits including Blithe Spirit, The Country Wife and A Room with a View. As a director she has staged Stepping Out, Peter Pan, Hey, Mr. Producer!, Steel Magnolias, Putting It Together and A Little Night Music.
She also teamed up with silksoundbooks to record an unabridged, high quality, mp3 audio book of Lewis Carrol's Through the Looking Glass.
