Biography

Bonita Melody Lysette Langford was born on 22 July 1964 in Hampton Court, Surrey. By the age of six she had won Hughie Green's Opportunity Knocks (1956) television talent contest and gained membership of Equity. Later she trained at the Arts Educational and Italia Conti stage schools in London. By her early teens she had starred on New York's Broadway ("Gypsy"), on London's West End ("Gone With the Wind") and in television shows (including the Bonnie and Lena (Lena Zavaroni) variety spectaculars). Her biggest success of the mid-1970's came when she played "Elizabeth Bott" in 7 of the 27 episodes of the children's drama series Just William (1977). It was this that helped fix her in the minds of the British public as a precocious child star - an image she found it hard to shed in later years, despite amassing an impressive list of credits as a dancer, singer and actress on stage: "Peter Pan: The Musical"; "Cats" and "The Pirates of Penzance", and on television: Saturday Starship and The Hot Shoe Show (1983). Shorly after her stint as "Mel" in Doctor Who (1963), this typecasting brought about an emotional crisis that caused her to take almost a year's break form her career. By the close of the 1980's she had recovered her health and resumed a hectic schedule of work, which has continued to date. In 1995 she was in the news again when she was married to actor Paul Grunert in Mauritius on 27 September.