British TV and theatre actress Josephine Melville has died backstage after performing a play. Melville shot to fame in the 1980s playing Tessa Parker in the long-running soap EastEnders. The theater company Nottingham Playhouse said she had just performed in a production of Nine Night when she was taken ill. The BBC reports that paramedics and a medically qualified member of the audience tried to save her life but she died at the scene. “Josephine’s family have been informed, and our thoughts and deep condolences are with them,” the theater company wrote. All remaining performances of Nine Night at the venue have been cancelled.