Jean Alexander
English actress (1926–2016)
Jean Margaret Hodgkinson (11 October 1926 – 14 October 2016), known by the stage name Jean Alexander, was a British actress. She was best known to television viewers for her long running role of Hilda Ogden in the soap opera Coronation Street, a role she played from 1964 until 1987, and as Auntie Wainwright in the long-running sitcom Last of the Summer Wine from 1988 to 2010. For her role in Coronation Street, she won the 1985 Royal Television Society Award for Best Performance, and received a 1988 BAFTA TV Award nomination for Best Actress.
Early life
Jean Margaret Hodgkinson was born at 18 Rhiwlas Street in the Toxteth area of Liverpool, Lancashire on 11 October 1926, to Nell and Archie Hodgkinson; her father worked as an electrician and the family lived in a terraced house with no indoor lavatory. Alexander had an elder brother, Kenneth. She aspired to become an actress from an early age, and later said that she was inspired by variety acts she saw at the Pavilion theatre in her home city. She attended St Edmund's College for Girls in Princes Park, Toxteth and as a teenager, she joined an amateur theatre group and took elocution lessons.
Career
Alexander spent five years as a library assistant in Liverpool but, with a love of Shakespeare, decided to be become an actress, making her stage debut in 1949 at the Adelphi Guild Theatre in Macclesfield. She first appeared as Florrie in Sheppey by W. Somerset Maugham. She later would spend 12 years working in rep in Oldham, Stockport and York.
The public source identifies “Jean Alexander” as english actress (1926–2016). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Jean, Alexander and English.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6170100. VIAF identifies the subject as 113785964. The Library of Congress control number is no2016139013. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1926, 2016, 1964 and 1987.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jean Alexander” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.