{"id":501665,"date":"2026-06-29T21:39:50","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T21:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/501665\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T21:39:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T21:39:50","slug":"actress-penelope-keith-star-of-the-good-life-dies-aged-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/501665\/","title":{"rendered":"Actress Penelope Keith, star of &#8216;The Good Life&#8217;, dies aged 86"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Veteran British actress Penelope Keith, who rose to fame in the hit 1970s UK sitcom The Good Life, has died aged 86, her family said.<\/p>\n<p>Keith, who was made a dame in Britain in 2014, established herself as a household name through her decades-spanning comedic roles on television, in film, radio and theatre.<\/p>\n<p>Her family said on Monday (local time) she had &#8220;died peacefully&#8221; at home after battling cancer.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The family is grateful for the care and support she received throughout her treatments,&#8221; they said.<\/p>\n<p>Keith&#8217;s first major break was as the snobbish suburbanite Margot Leadbetter in The Good Life, which earned her a BAFTA award.<\/p>\n<p>She later starred in To The Manor Born, another hit BBC sitcom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veteran British actress Penelope Keith, who rose to fame in the hit 1970s UK sitcom The Good Life,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-501665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}