Carry On legend's crippling despair being penniless and stuck on benefits

Fenella Fielding enjoyed an illustrious acting career and is best remembered for her Carry On Screaming role as sexy vampire Valeria, the ultimate Sixties femme fatale. The famed actress died at the age of 90 in 2018 after suffering a stroke. The Swinging Sixties brought success and frivolity. A serious actress, Fielding survived a violent upbringing to play Ibsen, Shakespeare and Euripides on stage. However, it was her Carry On performance which made her a legend. Carry On Screaming reunited Fielding with actor Kenneth Williams. The filming took three weeks and made her hugely famous. She played Valeria - a thinly disguised Morticia Addams. Every scene was done in one take but was most remembered for the scene where she reclined on a chaise longue, Fielding entices Harry H Corbett towards her. The eyes flutter and the voice purrs. "Do you mind if I smoke?" she inquires seductively.

But her career came with highs and lows and she admittedly faced desperate times. Carry On Regardless came along in 1961, then Carry On Screaming in 1966. After those she refused to do any more after fears of becoming a typecast. She didn't make another film for almost 15 years. The late 1970s proved less fruitful for the actress as she previously opened up about her struggles.

With the famously poorly paid Carry On stars receiving no royalties, the then middle-aged Fenella suffered money troubles.

While rarely ever being out of work, she continued on stage - with a string of well-reviewed provincial shows.

But, eventually, she struggled for money and was forced to go to the social security office to claim benefits - an experience she found demeaning.

She said: “It’s rather awful sitting in a room waiting for benefits and ­everybody knows who you are. I had a terrible feeling I was finished.”

Things soon turned around for the actress returning to the small screen in Guest House Paradiso and a role as an eccentric granny in the gritty teenage drama, Skins.

She was a regular on TV’s Morecambe & Wise Show, and appeared in The Avengers and in the Doctor In... comedy films with stars such as James Robertson Justice and Leslie Phillips.

She even recorded an album in 2012 called The Savoy Sessions, covering Robbie Williams’ Angels and Kylie’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head.

She ­continued working until the very end, with her final job doing a voice recording for LBC Radio on August 24, the day before she suffered a stroke.