Leah Bracknell obituary

The actor Leah Bracknell, who has died of cancer aged 55, made her name on television playing the first lesbian character in a British soap. She joined Emmerdale as the aspiring vet Zoe Tate, whose family moved into Home Farm, in the fictional Yorkshire Dales village of Beckindale, in 1989.

Zoe was the daughter of a millionaire haulage firm boss, Frank Tate (Norman Bowler), and stepdaughter of his second wife, Kim (Claire King). Bracknell quickly outgrew life as a satellite character. Zoe took a job at a veterinary practice in the nearby village of Hotton, then left for New Zealand to become a flying vet – giving Bracknell the first of two maternity-leave breaks from the serial.

On her return, Zoe eventually set up her own practice. By then, the village had changed its name to Emmerdale and the character had realised that she was not attracted to men. Weathering a string of soap-opera dramas, Bracknell steered Zoe through many relationships, schizophrenia, drink problems, the birth of a daughter after a brief encounter with Scott Windsor (Ben Freeman) and, six years apart, acquittals on charges of murder and attempted murder.

In 2005, after 16 years in Emmerdale, Bracknell announced she was taking a nine-month break to spend more time with her family and qualify as a teacher of yoga – which she found helped her to relax and stay calm during her busy schedule. In the event, she never returned to the soap. “I loved playing Zoe but by the time I left she was an emotional wreck,” Bracknell explained later. “I wasn’t sure where else I could take her.”

Zoe’s final scene – in which she blew up her family’s former home after being blackmailed into selling it – was named best exit in the 2006 British Soap awards. More significantly, Bracknell was widely praised for her screen portrayal of an LGBT character – not “having to wear a sign around her neck that constantly reinforced her sexuality,” wrote one observer – although she herself was most proud of the sensitive way in which she tackled Zoe’s mental illness.

In October 2016, a huge outpouring of generosity followed the actor’s announcement that she had terminal lung cancer. Bracknell launched an appeal to raise £50,000 for treatment in Germany that was not available on the NHS in Britain, and it hit its target within three days. She wrote about her experiences of cancer in a blog, Something Beginning With C.

She was born in London as Alison Bracknell, the daughter of Li-Er Hwang, a Chinese-Malayan actor, and David Bracknell, an assistant director of feature films. Her father met her mother when he was working on the film The World of Suzie Wong (1960), in which Li-Er appeared as Wednesday Lu. Later, Bracknell adopted the name Leah as an anglicisation of her mother’s name.

She was brought up in London and Oxford and made her screen debut as a child in four episodes of the Children’s Film Foundation serial The Chiffy Kids (1976-78), directed by her father and screened in cinemas during Saturday matinees.

“I wanted to be an actress from the age of five,” Bracknell told me at the height of her fame in Emmerdale. “I used to hang out with the technicians when my father was making films and inevitably you pick up the whole atmosphere. I spent years bullying him into giving me things to do until he finally let me appear in The Chiffy Kids.”

On leaving school, Bracknell spent a year in New Zealand during which she visited her father on the set of the 1983 film Savage Islands in Fiji and persuaded him to let her help in the wardrobe department.

Back in Britain, she did modelling and TV commercials, formed a cabaret act with a friend, and trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London (1984-87). Stage roles followed with the Oxford Players, Klaxon and Pandemonium theatre companies, and Eastern Actors’ Studio, and there were small parts on television in Cannon & Ball, The Bill and the 1989 TV movie Dealers.

After leaving Emmerdale, Bracknell returned to stage work and had TV guest roles in Judge John Deed (2007), Casualty 1907 (2008), A Touch of Frost (2010), Doctors (three characters, 2007-11) and DCI Banks (2011). She was also a regular in the 2008 daytime hospital soap The Royal Today as Jenny Carrington, the no-nonsense matron who ruled the wards with a rod of iron at the fictional St Aidan’s Royal Free hospital, which was also the setting for the peak-time drama The Royal, set in the 1960s.

Alongside teaching yoga and practising shamanic healing, Bracknell established a jewellery collection of her own designs using materials such as glass beads, coral and lacquer, and named after female Shakespeare characters. She donated a percentage of the profits to Wheatfields hospice, Leeds, and the mental health charity Rethink.

Bracknell is survived by her husband, Jez Hughes, whom she married in 2017, and by Lily and Maya, the children of her first marriage, which ended in divorce.

• Leah (Alison Rosalind) Bracknell, actor, born 12 July 1964; died September 2019