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Jocelyn Page was born on 23 July 23 1925 in Dawlish, Devon, England as Jocelyne Mary Page.[1] She was an actress, known for A Cradle of Willow (1952), BBC Sunday-Night Play (1960) and World Theatre (1959).[1] She was married to Stephen Hancock.[1]
Page was the only child.[2]
Sold music and records in Oxford before joining their repertory company, having lessons from Michael Martin Harvey, and then touring with several theatre companies.[1]
Page had attended RADA in the late 1930s, but had "hated it"; the school closed down with the outbreak of World War II.[2] While serving in the Women's Royal Naval Service, Page took dramatic lessons from xxx, who started a small school in Oxford. Her fellow pupils included Maggie Smith and Ronnie Barker.[2] Her involvement in an amateur production of The Taming of the Shrew in Oxford led to her appearance in "one of the very first Edinburgh fringe performances".[2]
In 1950 she joined a semi-professional tour of America with the Oxford University Dramatic Society, together with John Schlesinger, Robert Robinson, Ronald Eyre, Peter Dewes, and Shirley Catlin (later Baroness Williams).[2] She also joined a Shakespeare company started by Peter Hall and John Barton: "we went round and round England doing Henry V and Twelfth Night and that was tremendous because we played in town halls, we played in proper theatres, we played in Methodist chapels, we played in the open air and you just learnt and Peter Hall and John Barton were very young at the time but brilliant."[2]
"I always did rather serious plays because I was not very pretty and I was useful. So I ended up playing old women, which I loved, and all the old nurses in any play that was going and I do not know, I think I had more fun. I think I played what is called character parts and I think in a way sometimes they were more fun than the better looking women had."[2]
Mother of actress Phyllida Hancock (b. 1962) and casting director Gemma Hancock (b. 1966).[1]