Born in Leamington Spa in Warwickshire, Kelly is the great-niece of eminent actor and theatrical manager Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, who co-founded RADA in 1904.
In the 1970s, Kelly performed in the original productions of such stage plays as There Goes the Bride (1974) and Snatch 69 (1975) and in several overseas tours, including No Sex Please, We're British in Sweden, Confessions of a Window Cleaner in Zimbabwe, and Who Goes Bare in South Africa.
[1] At the peak of the television fame in the late 1980s, Kelly appeared as an Olympic volleyball player in Dig Volley Spike at the Old Red Lion Theatre in Islington and performed opposite John Inman in a production of Derek Benfield's farce Bedside Manners, which opened at the Salisbury Playhouse in March 1989 and toured for seven months.
Kelly has also performed the comparable roles of the Evil Queen or Fairy Carabosse in various productions of Sleeping Beauty at the Middleton Arena, Rochdale (2009), the Connaught Theatre, Worthing (2012/13) and elsewhere.
[1] In March 2010, Kelly appeared in a revised version of the stage adaptation of Hi-de-Hi, in which she played ballroom dancer Yvonne Stuart-Hargreaves (originally performed in the television series by the late Diane Holland).