Jill Freud, Actress and C.S. Lewis ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ Inspiration, Dies at 98

Jill Freud, a British actress and theater producer who as C.S. Lewis’ housekeeper served as the author’s inspiration for Lucy Pevensie in his Chronicles of Narnia children’s books, has died. She was 98.

Her death was announced Monday by her daughter Emma Curtis, the broadcaster and wife of filmmaker Richard Curtis.

“My beautiful 98 year old mum has taken her final bow,” she wrote. “After a loving evening — where we knew she was on her way — surrounded by children, grandchildren and pizza, she told us all to f*** off so she could go to sleep. And then she never woke up. Her final words were ‘I love you.’”

June Beatrice Flewett was born on April 22, 1927. She was evacuated from London to escape the Blitz, and when she was 16, she moved in with Lewis and his companion, Jane Moore, in their country house in Oxford as a housekeeper.

“At home, he was generosity itself,” she told THR’s Paul Bond in a 2014 interview. “He would let me buy any book I wanted. He would talk to me about things — never make me feel small. If I said anything really silly, he just wouldn’t answer. He was kind, generous, good humored, helpful. I was 16, and it was what you would call a schoolgirl crush.”

In the 1950 novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first of Lewis’ seven Chronicles of Narnia books, Lucy, the youngest of the four Pevensie kids, is the first to find the Wardrobe entrance to the fantasy world of Narnia. (Georgie Henley portrayed Lucy in the 2005 Disney film.)

“I have never really met anything like her unselfishness and patience and kindness and shall feel deeply in her debt as long as I live,” Lewis wrote in a letter to June’s mother, Winifred, in January 1945.

After three years, Jill left Lewis to study acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, with the author paying her way. Using the stage name Jill Raymond, she acted in the West End, in such films as The Woman in the Hall (1947) and on TV shows including Torchy, the Battery Boy.

Her last film role came as a Downing Street housekeeper in Love Actually (2003), written and directed by Richard Curtis.

Freud also “ran two reparatory theater companies in Suffolk for 30 years, employing 100’s of actors who loved her for her passion, her care, her shepherd’s pie, her devotion to regional theatre and her commitment to actor’s rights,” her daughter wrote.

Freud said she did not learn that she was the inspiration for Lucy until 2004. “I was absolutely thrilled. It’s like being told you were the real Lady Macbeth!” she told Bond.

She married Clement Freud, grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, in 1950. An actor, writer, newspaper columnist and broadcaster, he served as the Member of Parliament for the Isle of Ely from 1973 until 1987, when he was knighted and she became Lady Freud. He died in 2009 at age 84.

Survivors include her five children — a son, entrepreneur Matthew Freud, was once married to Elisabeth Murdoch, media executive and daughter of Rupert Murdoch — 17 grandchildren and seven great- grandchildren.