Annie Sugden (also Pearson, Kempinski and Brearly) is a fictional character from the British television soap opera Emmerdale.

Mercier cut back on location filming during the late 1980s and eventually left the serial in 1994 due to the gruelling schedule.

[1] Over the years, the character featured in a number of storylines, including being widowed twice, coping with the deaths of various other family members, financial woes, nearly dying in a farmhouse fire, an addiction to tranquillisers and sustaining injuries in the Emmerdale plane crash, which left her in a three-month coma.

Mercier and Frazer Hines, who played her on-screen son Joe Sugden, were the only two original cast members to appear in the show for its 20th anniversary.

[3] Mercier has previously made guest appearances in 1996 and in 2000 for a special web broadcast in which Annie talked to her troubled screen son Jack.

Annie Sugden was created by Kevin Laffan, the creator of what was then known as Emmerdale Farm who also wrote the serial's first 212 episodes.

Laffan was said to be "keen on dominant women" and it has been said that he created a "memorable heroine" in Annie Sugden, "the wife of the ne'er-do-well…who drank himself to an early grave" (the first episode opened with his funeral).

"[4] Actress Sheila Mercier – whose career had been mainly theatrical – was chosen to play the role and went on to be the serial's longest running original actor.

Mercier has commented "I had done a lot of television from the stage of the Whitehall, but very little else before joining Emmerdale Farm…I remember, at first, playing to the Gods!

[7] As peacekeeper between her sons, Joe (Frazer Hines) and Jack (Andrew Burt/Clive Hornby), Annie was soon placed at the centre of the soap's action.

She's a strong, level headed woman, loyal to her family but not blind to their weaknesses, and she speaks her mind when she feels it's called for.

When Annie meets Polish national, Leonard Kempinski (Bernard Archard) during a trip to Spain, she becomes very fond of him.

"[7] However, for the show's 5000th episode in May 2008 a special documentary was transmitted across the ITV network, Mercier (aged 89) made another appearance along with Hines, Frederick Pyne and Jean Rogers the actors who played Joe, Matt and Dolly Skilbeck, respectively.

[13] Annie Sugden was born on 5 July 1920, she was the only child of young labourer Sam Pearson and his wife Grace.

Early central storylines in the serial followed Annie as she struggled to come to terms with the death of her husband, support her family, and run Emmerdale Farm, set in the Yorkshire Dales in the fictional village of Beckindale.

She sold part of Emmerdale Farm to village outsider, Henry Wilks, who had made his fortune in the wool industry and brought his business acumen to Beckindale.

Early in the series, Woolpack landlord Amos Brearly decided a woman's touch was needed in his pub and proposes to Annie but she turns him down.

The cries of her new granddaughter Victoria Sugden finally wake Annie from her coma but she is devastated to discover Leonard has died.

At Jack's wedding to Sarah Connolly, Amos announces that the residents of Beckindale have decided to rename the village Emmerdale, in honour of Annie.

After moving to Spain in July 1994, Annie returns to Emmerdale the following year to bury her son Joe, who had died in a car accident.

It is described as a "story of the long, hot summers between the wars, the village school and the open fields [..] Annie's heart-warming memories of the good times and the hard times amongst honest working folk in the Yorkshire dales [...] the Diary of a country lass who loves life, despite its trials and tribulations".

The novel gives an account of Annie's parents, her "sensitive musical" mother, her "down-to-earth, prosaic" father, her "first and truest" love, Laurence Stanton, and her "reluctant" marriage to Jacob Sugden, right up until she became the owner of Emmerdale Farm.