Mary Jean Heriot Powell (12 December 1907 – 1 April 2001),[1] better known by her stage name Jean Anderson, was an English actress best remembered for her television roles as formidable matriarch Mary Hammond in the BBC drama The Brothers (1972–1976) and as rebellious aristocrat Lady Jocelyn "Joss" Holbrook in the Second World War series Tenko (1982–1985).

[1] Her first professional engagement was in Many Waters at the Prince's Theatre, Bristol, in 1929 with her fellow RADA student Robert Morley.

[4]When Anderson returned to London in 1940 she joined the staff of the Players’ Theatre Club, which was a popular refuge from the war.

[2] Her acting career resumed after the war with 1066 and All That, Don Juan in Hell, The Apple Cart and The Moon in the Yellow River with Jack Hawkins.

[5] At this point the focus of her work swung to television and film, but she continued to appear on stage in notable productions, such as Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author directed by Dame Ngaio Marsh,[2] Hedda Gabler, an all-star Uncle Vanya at Hampstead Theatre, and Les Liaisons Dangereuses[2] with Alan Rickman and the Royal Shakespeare Company in London and also on Broadway.

[6] Other TV credits include: Police Surgeon, Maigret, The Odd Man, The Man in Room 17, The Borderers, Paul Temple, Codename, Oil Strike North, Miss Marple, Inspector Morse, Campion, Rab C. Nesbitt, Keeping Up Appearances and Hetty Wainthropp Investigates.

[2] Her last role was in Conor McPherson’s film of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, shot in Dublin just a few months before her death.