Jill Freud, an actress whose final film role was the housekeeper at Downing Street in Love Actually, has died at age 98. Her daughter, Emma Freud, announced the news on social media, writing, “My beautiful 98-year-old mum has taken her final bow. After a loving evening–where we knew she was on her way–surrounded by children, grandchildren and pizza, she told us all to f--- off so she could go to sleep. And then she never woke up. Her final words were ‘I love you.’” Jill Freud—who married Sigmund Freud’s grandson, Clement, in 1950—was also the inspiration for the character Lucy in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. As a teen, she was evacuated to Oxford, where she worked as a housekeeper at the Kilns—the house C.S. Lewis lived in. The two struck up a friendship, with Lewis highlighting her “unselfishness and patience and kindness” in a 1945 letter that eventually led to the creation of Lucy. Jill Freud went on to run two repertory theater companies that employed “100’s of actors who loved her for her passion, her care, her shepherd’s pie, her devotion to regional theater and her commitment to actor’s (sic) rights,” according to Emma Freud’s post. She is survived by her five children, including her son, entrepreneur Matthew Freud, who was once married to Rupert Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, 17 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
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