Jean Marsh, star of Upstairs, Downstairs, has died aged 90, a friend has confirmed.

Marsh’s friend, director Sir Michael Lindsay-Hogg, said in a statement to the PA news agency that the actress “died peacefully in bed looked after by one of her very loving carers”.

“You could say we were very close for 60 years,” he added. “She was as wise and funny as anyone I ever met, as well as being very pretty and kind, and talented as both an actress and writer.

“An instinctively empathetic person who was loved by everyone who met her. We spoke on the phone almost every day for the past 40 years.”

Marsh was best known for her role as Rose in Upstairs, Downstairs, for which she won an Emmy for outstanding lead actress in a limited series in 1976.

She co-created the series – about life in Edwardian England – with Dame Eileen Atkins.

Born on 1 July 1934 in Stoke Newington, north London, Jean Lyndsey Torren Marsh’s mother worked in a bar and as a theatre dresser, while her father was a handyman and printer’s assistant.

Marsh took dance and mime classes as therapy for an illness at a young age, and began acting on stage with a stint at Huddersfield Rep in the 1950s.

She then transferred to London, and at just 12 years old made her West End debut in The Land Of The Christmas Stockings at The Duke of York’s Theatre.

A success in the US, Marsh appeared in iconic shows such as The Twilight Zone, Danger Man, Hawaii Five-O and Murder, She Wrote.

She also made appearances in classic British shows, including Doctor Who – where she played William Hartnell’s short-lived companion Sara Kingdom – and Detective.

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Erin Brockovich says a chance conversation about a muddy stiletto with her chiropractor led to the making of the award-winning film about her life.

The climate activist, who was played by Julia Roberts in the movie, told Sky News: “My girlfriend, who was a chiropractor, was giving me a chiropractic adjustment and asked me why I had mud on my stilettos.

“I said, ‘Oh, I’ve been collecting dead frogs’. She goes, ‘What is wrong with you?’ So, I started telling her what I was doing.”

Then just a junior paralegal, Brockovich was in fact pulling together evidence that would see her emerge victorious from one of the largest cases of water contamination in US history in Hinkley, California.

Her hard work would see her win a record settlement from Pacific Gas & Electric Company – $333m (£254m) – but that was all still to come.

Little did Brockovich know, but her tale of a muddy stiletto would get back to actor Danny DeVito and his Jersey Films producing partner Michael Schamburg, and through them to the film’s director Steven Soderbergh.

Brockovich says Soderbergh was “wowed” by what he heard.

She says he realised her image “was something that Hollywood might be drawn to that I was never thinking of – the short skirt, the attitude, the big bust, the stilettos, the backcombed hair. Somehow, it came together.”

‘I was always going to be misunderstood’

Released in 2000, the powerful story of one woman’s fight for justice made Brockovich a household name, and the film won actress Julia Roberts an Oscar.

Now, 25 years on, Brockovich says she believes her legal victory was helped in part by an unlikely ally – her learning difficulty.

Brockovich says: “Had I not been dyslexic, I might have missed Hinkley.”

Recently named a global ambassador for charity Made By Dyslexia, she’s been aware of her learning differences since childhood and still struggles today.

She says “moments of low self-esteem” still “creep back in”, and she long ago accepted “I was always going to be misunderstood”.

But for Brockovich, recognising her dyslexic strengths while working in Hinkley proved a pivotal moment: “My observations are wickedly keen. I feel like a human radar some days… Things you might not see as a pattern, I recognise. There are things that intuitively, I absolutely know.

“It will take me some time in my visual patterns of what I’m seeing, how to organise that. And it was in Hinkley that that moment happened for me because it was so omnipresent [and] in my face. Everything that should have been normal was not.”

‘A huge perfect storm’

Brockovich paints a bleak picture of what she saw in the small town: “The trees were secreting poison, the cows were covered in tumours, the chickens had wry neck [a neurological condition that causes the head to tilt abnormally], the people were sick and unbeknown to them, I knew they were all having the exact same health patterns. To the green water, to the two-headed frog, all of that was just I was like on fire, like electricity going, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s going on out here?'”

She describes it as “a huge, perfect storm that came together for me in Hinkley”.

But a side effect of the movie – overnight global fame – wasn’t always easy to deal with.

Brockovich calls it “scary,” admitting, “when the film first came out the night of the premiere, I was literally shaking so bad, I was so overwhelmed, that Universal Studios said, ‘If we can’t get you to calm down, I think we need to take you home’. It was a lot”.

Brockovich says she kept grounded by staying focused on her work, her family and her three children.

With Hollywood not always renowned for its faithful adherence to fact, Brockovich says the film didn’t whitewash the facts.

“I think they really did a good job at pointing out our environmental issues. Hollywood can do that, they can tell a good story. And I’m glad it was not about fluff and glamour. I’m glad it was about a subject that oftentimes we don’t want to talk about. Water pollution, environmental damage. People being poisoned.”

‘Defend ourselves against environmental assaults’

While environmental awareness is now part of the daily conversation in a way it wasn’t a quarter of a century ago, the battle to protect the climate is far from over.

Just last month, Donald Trump laid out plans to slash over 30 climate and environmental regulations as part of an ongoing effort to boost US industries from coal to manufacturing and ramp up oil and minerals production.

In response, Brockovich says, “We’re not going to stop it, but we can defend against these environmental assaults.

“We can do better with infrastructure. We can do better on a lot of policy-making. I think there’s a moment here. We have to do that because the old coming into the new isn’t working.

“I’ve recognised the patterns for 30-plus years, we just keep doing the same thing over and over and over and over again, expecting a different result.

“For me, sometimes it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, just get your ego out of the way’. We have to accept that this might be something greater than us, but we can certainly defend ourselves and protect ourselves and prepare ourselves better so we can get through that storm.”

You can listen to Brockovich speaking about her dyslexia with Made By Dyslexia founder Kate Griggs on the first episode of the new season of the podcast Lessons In Dyslexic Thinking, wherever you get your podcasts.

The Menendez brothers’ bid for freedom through resentencing can continue with the hearing scheduled for Thursday, a judge has ruled.

Lyle, 57, and Erik, 54, received life sentences without the possibility of parole after being convicted of murdering their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, at their Beverly Hills home in 1989.

Lyle was 21 at the time, Erik was 18.

Last year, Los Angeles district attorney George Gascon asked a judge to change the brothers’ sentence from life without the possibility of parole to 50 years to life. That would make them immediately eligible for parole because they committed the crime when they were younger than 26.

But Mr Gascon’s successor Nathan Hochman submitted a motion last month to withdraw the resentencing request, saying the brothers must fully acknowledge lies they told about the murder of their parents before he would support their release from prison.

Separately, Governor Gavin Newsom, who has the power to commute their sentences, has asked the parole board to consider whether the brothers would represent a public safety risk if released.

In light of Mr Hochman’s opposition, Los Angeles County Superior Court judge Michael Jesic ruled on Friday that the court can move forward with the hearing.

“Everything you argued today is absolutely fair game for the resentencing hearing next Thursday,” he said.

From prison, the brothers watched through a video link and could be seen in court seated next to each other in blue.

Speaking after the hearing, the brothers’ lawyer said: “Today is a good day. Justice won over politics.”

Prosecutors accused the brothers of killing their parents for a multimillion-dollar inheritance, although their defence team argued they acted out of self-defence after years of sexual abuse by their father.

The brothers have maintained their parents abused them since they were first charged with the murders.

A Netflix drama series and subsequent documentary about the brothers thrust them back into the spotlight last year, and led to renewed calls for their release – including from some members of their family.