Actress

Born: November 1, 1969;

Died: April 15, 2016

MORAG Siller, who has died of breast cancer aged 46, was on her way home from school in Edinburgh one afternoon when she stopped to watch a television crew filming an episode of Taggart. She decided there and then that she was going to be an actress.

She never fulfilled her childhood ambition of appearing in Taggart – she must be one of the few Scots screen actors not to do so. But she did carve out a successful career in theatre and television that included recurring roles in the soaps Casualty (2000-01), Emmerdale (2002-04) and Coronation Street (2013).

She was Julian Fellowes’ champagne-guzzling daughter Flora Kilwillie in Monarch of the Glen (2000), the popular Scottish comedy-drama series loosely based on Compton Mackenzie’s Highland Novels.

And last year she had the role of Voltemand, a Danish courtier, usually played by a man, in the National Theatre production of Hamlet, in London, with Benedict Cumberbatch as the indecisive prince. It set a record when it was watched “live” in cinemas around the world by an audience of almost a quarter of a million.

Siller was born in Edinburgh in 1969. When she was just a few years old, she and her twin Colin were adopted by a cabinet-maker and his wife, a nurse – according to Siller, he mother was especially proud when she appeared on Casualty, albeit as an alcoholic, rather than a medic.

Siller later tracked down her birth mother and other family, but never really understood why she was given up for adoption.

She grew up in the Greenbank area of south Edinburgh and began acting at James Gillespie’s High School. She studied at Edinburgh Acting School, headed for London in her late teens, and continued her training at RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

By the mid-1990s she was getting fairly regular work in television and theatre. While rehearsing for Les Miserables, she looked down into the orchestra and recognised the French horn player. “I know you,” she said. “We were at school together.” She and the horn player Tim Nicholson married in 2005.

She played the comic character Madame Thenardier, both on tour and in the West End. She also toured with Mamma Mia!, playing the central character’s best friend Rosie. The tour took her all the way to China.

Her biggest television role was possibly as Anne Reid’s wayward daughter in Ladies of Letters, in which Reid and Maureen Lipman play two widows and Siller’s character gets on better with her mother’s friend than she does with her mother. The show ran for two series on ITV3 in 2009 and 2010, though some critics felt it fell short of the original Radio 4 series on which it was based.

Siller and her husband had planned to adopt a baby, but Siller was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011. She was always noted for her enthusiasm and positive outlook on life and she did a lot of work for cancer charities, raising awareness, organising fund-raisers and serving as patron of the cancer charity Genesis. She is survived by her husband.

BRIAN PENDREIGH