Carol Drinkwater

Carol Drinkwater (born 22 April 1948) is an Anglo-Irish actress, author and filmmaker. She portrayed Helen Herriot (née Alderson) in the television adaptation of the James Herriot books All Creatures Great and Small, which led to her receiving the Variety Club Television Personality of the Year award in 1985. Drinkwater is the daughter of the bandleader and agent, Peter Regan (born Peter Albert Drinkwater) and Irish nurse, Phillis McCormack.

She was a member of the National Theatre Company under the leadership of Laurence Olivier and has acted in numerous television series and films including the highly successful Chocky, Bouquet of Barbed Wire, Another Bouquet and Golden Pennies. Drinkwater won a Critics' Circle Best Screen Actress award for her role, Anne, in the feature film Father (1990) in which she starred opposite Max von Sydow. Amongst many other film and television series, she has appeared in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971), Queen Kong (1976), The Shout (1978), Father (1990), and the film adaptation of Beryl Bainbridge's novel An Awfully Big Adventure (1995), directed by Mike Newell and starring Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman.

She has written a number of children's books, including her first, The Haunted School, which was produced as a television mini-series and film.