Bradley was born Joan Abraham in Macclesfield, Cheshire, the daughter of a senior civil servant, and took her father's middle name as her stage surname.
Bradley's played wheelchair-using pensioner Maud Grimes in Coronation Street from 1993 to 1999.
She has also made TV appearances in London's Burning, The Bill, Casualty, Bad Girls and The Sweeney.
Her film roles included Four Dimensions of Greta and The Flesh and Blood Show (both 1972) with director Pete Walker, and as the old woman who encounters a naked David Naughton at London Zoo in An American Werewolf in London (1981).
[2] Bradley married actor Garth Adams in 1950, and remained with him until his death in 1977; they had three children.