No Trees in the Street. She announced she would make her first screen comedy The Light Blue. This became Bachelor of Hearts. In 1959, Syms appeared in the film Expresso Bongo as Maisie King, opposite Cliff Richard. She played opposite Dirk Bogarde in the 1961 film Victim, as the wife of a barrister who is a closet homosexual. The film is thought to have broadened the debate that led to the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in private in the United Kingdom. In March 1959 she was voted Variety Club's Film Actress of 1958. Syms made Ferry to Hong Kong, The World of Suzie Wong and Conspiracy of Hearts. Syms travelled to Ireland to play opposite Patrick McGoohan as the wife of a condemned man in The Quare Fellow. She played Tony Hancock's wife in The Punch and Judy Man. The film also featured her nephew, Nick Webb. In 1963 she ended her contract with Associated British which by then guaranteed her £10,000 a year but which she felt was too restrictive. She appeared in East of Sudan. In 1965 she appeared on stage in Dual Marriageway. Later Career Other comedies followed, such as The Big Job (1965) with Sid James and Bat Out of Hell (1967), but it was for drama that she won acclaim, including The Tamarind Seed (1974) with Julie Andrews and Omar Sharif, for which she was nominated for a British Film Academy award. Syms featured in the husband-and-wife TV comedy My Good Woman from 1972 to 1974 and on the weekly BBC programme Movie Quiz as one of two team captains. In 1975, Syms headed the jury at the 25th Berlin International Film Festival. Shortly after the end of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's term in office in 1990, Syms portrayed her in Thatcher: The Final Days (1991), a Granada television film for ITV, which dramatises the events surrounding Thatcher's removal from power, a role she recreated for stage. In 1989 Syms starred in the Doctor Who story Ghost Light. From 2000 to 2003, Syms played Marion Riley in the ITV comedy-drama At Home with the Braithwaites. She also featured in the serial The Jury and contributed Sonnet 142 to the compilation albumWhen Love Speaks. For Stephen Frears's biopic The Queen (2006), Syms was cast as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. She also appeared in The Poseidon Adventure (2005), an American TV film that was a