The British actress who once tricked a famous director into casting her by inventing a whole new identity has died, and the wider world did not find out for months.

Georgina Cates, who starred in the BBC sitcom “2point4 Children” and the film “An Awfully Big Adventure,” died May 6, 2026, at 51. The press did not report her death for more than five months.

The news spread on Saturday, Oct. 17, when Andrew Marshall, who created the sitcom, posted on X. “I’m very sad to report, I have just discovered, that lovely and talented Claire Woodgate aka Georgina Cates, our 1st Jenny in 2p4 died last May,” Marshall wrote.

He added that he knew nothing beyond what was on IMDb, offered his sympathies to her family and children, and asked anyone with more information to share it.

The Instagram Post Few Noticed

Her family had said so months earlier. Naiia Ulrich, her daughter with actor Skeet Ulrich, wrote on Instagram in June that her mother had died. “My beautiful, free-spirited mom lived a hard life and still found ways to make herself and others laugh and smile,” Naiia wrote.

She married Ulrich, who starred in “Scream” and “Riverdale,” in 1997 after the two met at an Oscar party, and the wedding was held on their farm in Madison County, Va. They had twins, Naiia and Jakob, born in 2001, and divorced in 2005 after eight years.

Red Hair and a New Accent

She was born Clare Elaine Woodgate on April 4, 1975, in Colchester, Essex, England, and attended Colchester County High School for Girls. She landed the part of Jenny Porter at 16, playing the teen daughter in a London household forever beset by bad luck and strange mishaps. It was her first screen role. She played Jenny for the first two seasons, from 1991 to 1992, and actress Clare Buckfield took over the part for the show’s final six seasons.

Then came the audition that changed her career. Auditioning under her real name for the role of Stella in the 1995 film “An Awfully Big Adventure,” she was rejected. She dyed her hair red, adopted a Liverpudlian accent and went back as Georgina Cates, a 17-year-old working-class Scouser. She got the part.

Director Mike Newell adapted the film from Beryl Bainbridge’s 1990 novel, and Cates played Stella Bradshaw opposite actors Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant. It premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes. Newell said he had been conned, and that he was angry at first before deciding the ruse was good for show business.

In a 2016 interview, Cates said she had always been odd, and that she ran away from home for a day at 13 to find herself an agent.

A Best Actress Award in Brooklyn

Her sharpest notices came in 1998, as Amanda, a cheating wife, in the black comedy “Clay Pigeons,” produced by Ridley Scott, directed by David Dobkin and co-starring actors Vince Vaughn and Joaquin Phoenix. That same year she appeared in “Illuminata,” written and directed by John Turturro and set in a turn-of-the-century New York theater company, and in “A Soldier’s Sweetheart,” a Showtime telefilm shot in New Zealand with Ulrich and actor Kiefer Sutherland.

Her other credits included “The Ruth Rendell Mysteries,” “The Bill,” “Casualty,” “Chris Cross,” “An Exchange of Fire” (1993), “Au Pair” (1994), “Frankie Starlight” (1995), “Big City Blues” (1997) and “Stiff Upper Lips” (1997).

After a seven-year break from the industry, she returned with the independent film “Sinner” and won Best Actress in a Leading Role at the 41st Brooklyn Arts Council International Film & Video Festival in 2007. She appeared in “Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa” in 2013. Her last screen credits came in 2016. In recent years she worked as a photographer.

No cause of death has been made public, and no explanation has been given for why the press did not report her death for more than five months. She is survived by Naiia and Jakob.

Skeet Ulrich left a comment under his daughter’s post: “I love you more than words can say sweetheart.”