- Born
- Birth nameFiona D. Spence
- Born in Bromley, England in 1946 to an Irish mother and an Australian father, Fiona started acting in her late twenties, having previously trained as a secretary and worked in the department store Fortnum & Mason whilst living in London, having already lived in Hong Kong, Australia and Canada. She is best known to TV viewers for her role as warped but tragically misunderstood prison officer Vera Bennett in the cult drama Prisoner (1979). In 1990, Fiona recreated the role for a British stage play version of the series.- IMDb mini biography by: ben-5678
- Sister in law of Kerry Spence.
- Said in an interview that after working on Prisoner that she didn't like to have her hair sitting on her face. Because she was so used to having it up on the Prisoner set it was much easier to work with.
- Ranked 11th out of 25 for most Prisoner episodes. Spence appeared in 223 episodes.
- Has stated in interviews that although born in England and having lived there until the age of seven, she considers herself to be "110% Australian.".
- Discussing Vera Bennett's Nickname: They loved going past my house and saying very gingerly 'Vinegar Tits' before racing off at a million miles an hour. I've never minded it. I think its just a bit of fun.
- Discussing Wentworth during 2016: It's the biggest compliment out isn't it? It's a huge compliment, yeah. And the show is fabulous and its not like Prisoner it's up with the modern day so its a credit, it's fabulous.
- Thirty years ago there was nothing, it was bush. There was a pub, The Burvale, and a Chinese Restaurant. But you left civilisation and you went into the bush. We went to work in the dark and came home in the dark because we worked long hours.
- The big shock was when I was with Caroline Gilmer and she was in the stage musical Nine, and I was standing at traffic lights and kids would go past yelling 'Hi Vera' and I didn't know it was being run on Pay TV. That was such a culture shock, because I'd forgotten.
- I was never really one to want the attention on me, but the kids that's fine. People were really nice to me. I think Maggie (Kirkpatrick) was hit with an umbrella or something but nobody ever did that to me! They were just really nice.
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