Diane Keen

Diane Keen (born 29 July 1946) is an English actress. With a career spanning numerous decades, she has appeared in various television series, films and stage productions. Keen's notable roles include Fliss Hawthorne in the Granada sitcom The Cuckoo Waltz, Sandy Bennett in Rings on Their Fingers, Jenny Burden in The Ruth Rendell Mysteries and Julia Parsons on the BBC soap opera Doctors. Keen also appeared in Nescafé advertisements from 1980 to 1989.

Keen was born in London on 29 July 1946. She grew up in East Africa, principally Tanganyika and later Kenya, where her father was a civil engineer. She attended boarding school and returned to Britain at the age of 19, where she became a secretary for The Ivy League's fan club; this led to her releasing a 45 r.p.m. single of "Sally Go 'Round the Roses" (credited as Dee King) on the Piccadilly label in 1966.

Keen was a regular on television during the 1970s and early 1980s, starring in long-running sitcoms such as The Cuckoo Waltz, Rings on Their Fingers, Shillingbury Tales and You Must Be the Husband, and in two runs of the Thames Television children's historical costume drama The Feathered Serpent. She also guest-starred in many shows, including The Morecambe and Wise Show, and featured as Laura Dickens in the spy drama The Sandbaggers.

Keen played Sandra Gould in Crossroads from 1968 to 1971. She then had a part in the film Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1968) as Claire, Judy Geeson's university student friend, and appeared in an episode of Budgie as Barbara. She appeared in the 1977 spin-off film of 1970s TV detective series The Sweeney. Keen starred as Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary ("Sissi") in episode one of the 13-part series Fall of Eagles (1974), and played Hilda in The Professionals series 1 episode Killer With a Long Arm in 1978. In 1980, she appeared as widowed restaurant owner Christina in Series 1 episode The Dessert Song of Minder. She went on to star with David Jason in A Touch of Frost.

Keen starred in a series of advertisements for Nescafé coffee from 1980 to 1989 and made an appearance in an episode of Taggart in 1987. In the next decade, she became a regular in the The Ruth Rendell Mysteries series, playing the wife of Inspector Wexford's D.I. Roles in Brookside and several other television series followed, including New Tricks.

Keen was then a series regular in the BBC soap opera Doctors, playing practice manager Julia Parsons from 2003 to 2012. She reprised this role in March 2020 for a short stint. For her portrayal of Julia, Keen was annually nominated for the British Soap Award for Best Actress between the 2005 and 2010 British Soap Awards.[ 11] She was nominated for Best Actress again in 2012.[ 12] She also won in the Actress category at the 2008 RTS Midlands Awards.[ 13]

Keen has appeared onstage, including in the Alan Ayckbourn play Absent Friends at the Bristol Old Vic, and in two acclaimed tours of Same Time, Next Year.[ 14] In 2013, she co-starred in a British tour of The Vagina Monologues.[ 15] A year later, she appeared in a stage production of thriller play The Small Mind, adapted from the novel by Susan Hill.[ 16] Then in 2023, she was cast in a production of Home, I'm Darling that toured across the UK.[ 17]

Keen has one daughter, Melissa, by her marriage to Paul Greenwood, which ended in divorce in 1979. Her granddaughter, Siena Pugsley, played the role of her on-screen granddaughter, Chloe McGuire, in Doctors.[ 18] In 2023, Keen announced via her Twitter (X) account that she had suffered a “Catastrophic Stroke” and that she was lucky to be alive.[ 19]