Katy Gardiner

Katy Gardiner, who has died at the age of 87, was an actress, poet and mentor who was destined for no ordinary life.

Born in 1924 to Joe Harrison Maxwell and his wife Kathleen, she entered a world where passion and intellect were hailed as the noblest of all qualities. Both parents were teachers but also socialist intellectuals and activists. Equal in all they did.

Kathleen, admired for her beauty as much as her brain, became the first woman election agent for the Labour Party, while Joe, an archaeologist, was renowned for many significant finds around Glasgow and on Skye.

They travelled in inter-war Germany and Russia, speaking both languages fluently. Polyglots, they spoke only German to young Katy for her first two years in a vain attempt to bring her up at least bi-lingual. Her refusal to comply was the first hint of what was to come; a wilful determination to follow her own path, at whatever cost.

Late parents, they were determined their child should grow up independent, resilient and unpolluted by the bourgeois conventionalities of the day.

To that end they refused to entrust their precociously gifted daughter to the rigid, often harsh education system; home schooling her until persuaded by the local doctor she needed company her own age. Kathleen, "Mama", only agreed after extracting a promise from the Riddrie school 100 yards from the house that they would never beat her.

Summers were spent on her father's digs, under canvas. As the world fermented with war and unrest she would avidly listen to the young men who gathered around her parents – some on their way to the Spanish Civil War. Although still a child, she fell in love with both their ideals and them.

At the age of 17 she thwarted her parents' wish for a university education, enrolling at Glasgow School of Art, privately paid for by them. They appreciated her undoubted gift, but despaired when, still a first-year student, she left to live a garret life with a penniless part-time teacher/student, 25-year-old David Donaldson. He went on to become professor and the Queen's Limner in Scotland.

Besotted and now dedicated to furthering his career, she became a teenage wife and gave birth to David, who, with his wife Marion subsequently became the design team, whose clothes are on permanent display at Glasgow's Riverside Museum.

Now throwing herself into acting, she joined the Glasgow Unity Theatre and in less than two years the marriage was over although the pair remained good friends until his death.

Also in the theatre was the man who would become her second husband: a young scriptwriter, Eddie Boyd, who would later achieve fame as a writer, dramatist and broadcaster. She took the surname Gardiner, named after a fictitous character in one of Boyd's radio series. A year later their daughter Susan was born combining both her parents' talents, a regular EastEnders scriptwriter before her death, aged 55, in 2004.

As Boyd wrote, Gardiner worked as an illustrator for a number of magazines including Scottish Field. Her intricate, often fantastical front covers were instantly recognisable and despite an often stormy relationship, the couple collaborated on designs for his short stories and radio dramas.

The marriage ended badly after 10 years and Gardiner enrolled as a mature student in the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. She was to last a year before history repeated itself and she became involved with a much younger student, Stuart Henry.

As ever, more wanting to inspire than aspire, she took a tone-deaf, budding actor and turned him into one of the country's leading DJs, first on pirate radio, then as a regular fixture on Top of the Pops.

She continued to write and act, but when an embittered Boyd wrote a thinly disguised attack on her life (she was played by a lookalike in a BBC play), she decided to sue for libel. The case played out in front-page, lurid headlines, and despite losing, she felt she'd won a moral victory.

It came at a cost as work dried up and she was effectively blacklisted by the BBC. Thames TV produced her play The Girl on the M1 in 1971, leading to critical acclaim.

Returning to Glasgow after 11 years with Henry, she continued her work but increasingly her flat became a salon for writers, actors and artists. She had a gift for spotting talent and encouraging its emergence, neglecting her own talent in the mentoring. One such spot was artist and writer Alasdair Gray, whom she encouraged and pushed during his difficult early days.

Spells at theatre workshops, a run at the Ochtertyre Theatre Company and historical plays for Glasgow schools' closed-circuit TV were avidly worked at even though her eyesight and health were gradually deteriorating.

Despite being laterally house-bound and virtually blind, she used her telephone to plug into her lost world of books and theatre; demanding the latest news, the latest gossip. Passion and intellect.

Her son David has best summed up her life: "My wife asked me what I thought was Katy's greatest achievement. That stumped me. Eventually I said, her whole life. Her life was her creation: a serial drama in which she was the star, the ingenue, the tragic heroine, the romantic lead, the femme fatale, the wronged woman, the Svengali. She was out of the ordinary and she revelled in it."