Morag Hood

Biography

Born in Cardonald, in 1942, she was the daughter of a master of works for Glasgow theatres, whose roots were in Shetland, and the much younger sister of Eila and of Scottish Television’s Head of entertainment, the late Liam Hood.

She was a versatile Scottish actress best known internationally as a star of “War and Peace” on the BBC in the 1970s. A celebrated beauty, she was in her late 20s when she won the coveted role of the girlish Natasha in BBC-TV’s lengthy 1972 adaptation of Tolstoy’s novel. The 12 1/2-hour mini-series, also starring Anthony Hopkins and Alan Dobie, was more than two years in the making.

In 1974 she played Stella Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’s “Streetcar Named Desire” in the West End of London. In 1976 she went to the National Theatre Company, where she played roles ranging from Celia in Ben Jonson’s “Volpone” to Esmeralda in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

She performed in repertory theatres in Dundee, Scotland; Liverpool, England; and at Bristol Old Vic before making her West End debut in 1968 in Goldoni’s “Servant of Two Masters.”