Carol Drinkwater

Carol Drinkwater (born 22 April 1948) is an Anglo-Irish actress, writer and filmmaker currently residing in France. 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.
Career.
London-born Drinkwater 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.
"All Creatures Great and Small".
Drinkwater portrayed Helen Herriot (née Alderson), the wife of James Herriot, for the first three series of the original BBC television series "All Creatures Great and Small". She left the role in 1979. "I'd given everything I could and I couldn't think where else I could take the role, because there was no more material. I wasn't leaving in any kind of spiteful thing. The BBC was so angry with me, they put a ban on using me. So they re-cast and another actress got the role. I was terribly upset because it was a wonderful role and would have been very good for me. I must say now, looking back on my career, it's one of the few things in my life I would do differently, and I wouldn't have left."
"Carol will always remain my favourite actress," "All Creatures" make-up artist Maggie Thomas recalled. "She was a breath of fresh air; never moody or difficult, a warm, merry and very natural girl. I can remember our first day on location. We were only working with Chris and a cow, which had fallen and become stuck in a small burn, so Carol had decided to come out to watch and meet everyone. She hadn't got any scenes that first day, so she was dressed for the summer in her own clothes. The shorts she wore were kind of Boy Scout-cum-M*A*S*H ex-army drill, but on her figure they looked anything but. There was always an impishness about her and an air of complete unawareness of her own effect on men. The male members of the crew went into meltdown. She was oblivious, smiling and chatting to everyone, just enjoying the beautiful weather and getting to know who was who on the crew. They all remained in love with her for as long as she was the leading lady."
Later career.
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. Bought by Disney, it won the Chicago International Film Festival Gold Award for Children's Films. 
Her books for adults include commercial fiction and a series of best-selling memoirs about her experiences on her olive farm in Provence. In 2013 Drinkwater worked on a series of five documentary films inspired by her two Mediterranean travel books, "The Olive Route" and "The Olive Tree". The Olive Route films were completed in February 2013 and have since been broadcast on international networks worldwide. 
In 2015 Penguin Books UK announced a deal signed with Drinkwater to write two epic novels. The first, "The Forgotten Summer", was published in March 2016. The second, "The Lost Girl", was published in June 2017. Drinkwater revealed to The Guardian, in October 2017, that the experience of the starlet Marguerite in "The Lost Girl" was based on her own experience of being sexually assaulted by Elia Kazan while auditioning for the leading film role in his film "The Last Tycoon" (1976).
In 2018 Penguin signed a second deal with Drinkwater for two further novels. The first, published in May 2019, is "The House on The Edge of The Cliff". The second, "An Act of Love," will be published on 29 April 2021.
Personal life.
Drinkwater is the daughter of the bandleader and agent Peter Regan (born Peter Albert Drinkwater) and Irish nurse Phillis McCormack; her sister is actress Linda Regan.
She is married to French television producer Michel Noll, and has two stepdaughters from Noll's first marriage.