Jacqueline Pearce (20 December 1943 – 3 September 2018) was a British film and television actress. She was best known for her portrayal of the principal villain Servalan in the British science fiction TV series Blake's 7 (1978–1981), a performance which her obituarist in The Times wrote produced "a sexual awakening for a generation of sci-fi fans". Pearce studied at both the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and at the Actors Studio. After early roles in two Hammer horror films, The Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile, she played opposite Jerry Lewis in Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River. On stage, she acted in Otherwise Engaged, directed by Harold Pinter, and in Tom Stoppard's Night and Day, and she had numerous television, theatre and audio roles, including in Doctor Who. She suffered from clinical depression during periods of her life, which she discussed in her memoir, From Byfleet to the Bush (2012). Pearce spent five years working at the Vervet Monkey Foundation in South Africa, before returning to the UK in 2015. Early life Jacqueline Pearce was born in Byfleet, Surrey, on 20 December 1943. She grew up spending time both living at her father's home in Byfleet and with a foster family, after her mother had left when Pearce was 16 months old. She attended the Marist Convent School for Girls at West Byfleet, where one of the teachers encouraged her to pursue her ambition of acting, and after leaving school, Pearce successfully auditioned for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Career After graduating from RADA in 1963, Pearce made her television debut in the series A Question of Happiness, in which she played a waitress in the episode "Watch Me I'm a Bird", alongside her RADA contemporaries Drewe Henley, Ian McShane and John Hurt. In the same year, she flew to Yugoslavia to film a short appearance for the film Genghis Khan. She later appeared in minor roles in Danger Man and in Sky West and Crooked, where McShane played a character who was her boyfriend. In Spring 1965, she auditioned for Anthony Nelson Keys at Bray Studios, and won leading roles in two Hammer horror films, The Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile. These were filmed one after another on the same location and both released in 1966. She married Henley in 1963, after they met when he directed her in a short