Emma Chambers: Actress who mastered the comic sidekick opposite Dawn French in Vicar of Dibley

“When she’s performing, I just stand back and admire her acting,” said Dawn French of her much-loved Vicar of Dibley co-star Emma Chambers, who has died aged 53.

French's Vicar telling her foil Alice Tinker (played by Chambers) a joke over a mug of tea was the ritual sign-off for each episode. In one the Vicar describes a “Blind Man” knocking on the door of a nun who is having a bath. The nun lets him in. He says: “Nice tits, now where do you want me to hang the blind?”

Chambers’ character is not quick to get the wordplay, and when she does erupts in a fit of hysterical laughter that itself is so hilarious one forgets what triggered it in the first place. Upstaged, the Vicar is bemused – her joke was not meant to be that funny.

Why did we not see more of Chambers in British comedy? Was she underused? Overlooked? Perhaps the answer is that she was never show-time, taking long breaks from acting and describing herself as a “private person”.

Chambers was born Emma Gwynedd Mary Chambers in Doncaster, Yorkshire, but grew up mostly on the family farm in Hampshire. While her siblings, brother Simon Chambers and sister Sarah Doukas, would go on to found the Storm modelling agency, Chambers always knew she wanted to act. She trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art alongside future EastEnders star Ross Kemp.

After drama school, Chambers worked mostly on stage. She made her West End debut in 1988, opposite Ian McKellen in Alan Ayckbourn’s comedy Henceforward… Her television breakthrough came six years later when she was cast as Charity Pecksniff in a BBC adaption of Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit.

However, the role that would endear her to the nation was that of gullible but lovable verger Alice Tinker in BBC comedy The Vicar Of Dibley. Alice was a character Chambers would play for 13 years, appearing in all 20 episodes of the series and four Comic Relief specials.

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Chambers once said: “Just like Alice I am vulnerable, emotional and caring, but I am not thick. I think she is gorgeously naive, like a child, and that is one thing I am not – I am a cynical old bitch!”

In 1998, her performance as Alice won her the British Comedy Award for Best Actress. But much as Chambers appreciated the public’s love for Alice, it could be frustrating.

She told The Times: “People come up to me and say, ‘Are you that stupid?’ I look at them and say: ‘Oh, yes. I am dim, dim sum, dim sum dim. Dim, dim, dim, dim,’ and they look at me rather strangely, and I am the one who goes off smiling. I giggle to myself and I think, ‘For God’s sake, be inventive, say something else.’”

In 1999, Chambers was cast in another ditsy role – this time as Honey Thacker, younger sister to Hugh Grant’s character in romantic comedy Notting Hill. When asked what it was like to work with co-star Julia Roberts, Chambers joked: “I just remember thinking, ‘You are completely beautiful. and smiling a lot, so she probably thought I was a lesbian, which I am not.”

After Notting Hill, Chambers took a break from acting and considered abandoning her career altogether. However, two years later she took the role of Sheila in Michael Frayn’s Benefactors, opposite Neil Pearson.

Talking to The Telegraph at the time, she described how her return to the stage was nearly cut short when she found a cat in her changing room. Chambers had a severe allergy to all kinds of animals, which manifested itself in asthma attacks. “So the poor cat had to go – it was either the actress or the cat. What a diva I am!”

In 1991, Chambers married fellow actor, Ian M Dunn, whose credits include Coronation Street and Doctors. She told The Independent: “The wedding itself was in the New Forest. I loved it because I had never had a big party before as we had always been on the move when I was a child.”

With her father unable to attend the ceremony, Chambers was given away by Ian McKellen. “I had been living with Ian and he was a sort of father figure to me. We didn’t have a honeymoon. I was back at work on the Monday.”

She was playing the lead in another Ayckbourn play, and was given only one day off.

When asked in the same interview whether her husband ever minded her being more famous, she said, “No, because he is just such a lovely man.”

News of Chamber’s untimely death by natural causes brought forward gushing tributes from the theatre and film world. Emma Freud wrote on Twitter, ‘She was a great, great comedy performer, and a truly fine actress. And a tender, sweet, funny, unusual, loving human being.”

Hugh Grant said of his Notting Hill co-star, “Emma Chambers was a hilarious and very warm person and of course a brilliant actress. Very sad news.”

And in a statement to the Press Association, Dawn French said: “Emma was a very bright spark and the most loyal & loving friend anyone could wish for. I will miss her very much.”

Chambers is survived by her husband and siblings.

Emma Chambers, actor, born 11 March 1964, died 21 February 2018