in 1953 She was born as
Topsy Jane Legge in
Erdington in
Birmingham in 1938, the daughter of Anna Maud
née Gumbrell (1907-2006) and Albert Harry Legge (1894-1961), a dairy-man and by 1939 a telephone engineer for the
GPO. Her father was a committed Communist and later was to be a major influence in the political awakening of her husband, the British film and television producer and actor
Tony Garnett. Topsy Jane was educated at Paget Road School before going on to study at Garrett's Green College. Initially, she intended to train as a children's nurse, but while appearing in amateur theatre at the Varley Players at Pype Hayes Church, the Birmingham Drama Group, and the
Highbury Little Theatre she realised she had a talent for acting. Her husband, Tony Garnett, later wrote of her: "Leaving school at fifteen, Topsy was not academic, although she read voraciously, loving Tolstoy and almost any nineteenth-century English or French novel she could lose herself in. We shared a love of poetry. She loved Keats and I liked Shelley. She would listen as I held forth, no doubt pretentiously, on some matter, using ill-digested political jargon. Then she would ask a penetrating, naive question, using simple Anglo-Saxon words, leaving me spluttering. It was done with no edge. Her love was so guileless, so complete, I never doubted it. No one had loved me so totally since I was five. She became everything to me, emotionally, although I still kept a tough exterior. Our emotional intimacy was without barriers. We trusted each other." ==Acting career==