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Louise Gold is an English puppeteer, actress and singer whose career has spanned more than five decades. She is known for puppetry on television and roles in musical theatre in…
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Louise Gold (born 1956) is an English puppeteer, actress and singer whose career has spanned more than five decades. She is known for puppetry on television and roles in musical theatre in the West End, as well as other television, film and voice roles.
Louise Gold is an English puppeteer, actress and singer whose career has spanned more than five decades. She is known for puppetry on television and roles in musical theatre in the West End, as well as other television, film and voice roles.
Louise Gold (born 1956) is an English puppeteer, actress and singer whose career has spanned more than five decades. She is known for puppetry on television and roles in musical theatre in the West End, as well as other television, film and voice roles.
Gold was raised in London, beginning training in the arts. She began to appear in musical theatre in the mid-1970s. She was a puppeteer and voice actress for The Muppet Show, for four seasons from 1977, and later for Sesame Street, and she has performed voice and puppet work on various other Muppet films, albums and television specials. She was a founder of, and lead puppeteer for, the satirical television show Spitting Image from 1984 to 1986 and occasionally thereafter.
Gold's appearances in musical theatre shows in the West End include Joe Papp's London production of The Pirates of Penzance in 1982. She has played such roles as Mrs Johnstone in Blood Brothers, Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes, Kate in Kiss Me, Kate, Tanya in Mamma Mia!, Phyllis in Follies, Baroness Bomburst in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Miss Andrew in Mary Poppins, Mrs Sowerberry and Mrs Bedwin in Oliver!, and Mazeppa in Gypsy. She was a regular performer in the Lost Musicals concert productions in London in the 1990s and performs in her own cabaret act.
Gold was born in London, to parents who were active with Unity Theatre in London. Her father was John Gold (1920–1998), a journalist, and her mother was an actress, Una Brandon-Jones (1916–2010). Her brother, Max (born 1958), is also an actor. Gold trained at the Arts Educational Schools from age 11.
Gold made her professional debut in 1973, while still in her last year of school, in the Christmas pantomime Dick Whittington and His Cat, as Fairy Bowbells, at the Malvern Festival Theatre. She played in the musical Hair on tour in Britain in 1974. In 1975–76, she played Rachel in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the York Theatre Royal and then on tour (as Rachel and Potiphar's Wife).
In 1977, Gold joined The Muppet Show, during the show's second season, where Jim Henson trained her as a puppeteer. She played several characters during her four seasons with the show, including Annie Sue Pig. She also sang on several of The Muppets' albums and was often paired vocally with Jerry Nelson. She was a puppeteer in the films The Great Muppet Caper (1981) and The Dark Crystal (1982), and she appeared in various other Muppet series and specials. Muppet chronicler Christopher Finch wrote that Gold was "the most versatile female puppeteer to work on The Muppet Show [and] the only British member of the cast." During these years, she continued to appear in musicals and plays in between her commitments to The Muppets. Among her non-puppeteering television appearances, Gold was featured as Mrs Tyler, a Goodwife, in the first series episode "Witchsmeller Pursuivant" of Blackadder (1983). The same year, she appeared as Maureen Bedford in episode two of For 4 Tonight, a talk-show spoof. In 1991, she played the domineering Private Elsa Bigstern in two episodes of 'Allo! 'Allo!.
From 1984 to 1986, and occasionally thereafter, Gold was a lead puppeteer and voice on the satirical television show Spitting Image and was the lead singer (as Nancy Reagan) on their first single, "Da Do Run Ron", a pastiche of The Crystals' "Da Doo Ron Ron", released in 1984. Gold was the first puppeteer hired for the show and "helped out with the Spitting Image pre-pilot, so she naturally became the 'consultant' for the hiring [and training] of the rest" of the puppeteers. Peter Fluck, a creator of the show, commented, "Louise Gold always did the Queen and the mannerisms and facial expressions she put into it were wonderful. It was very exciting because this lump of clay we modelled with a fairly neutral expression came to life."
Gold's later puppeteering work includes the title character, Fughetta Faffner, in The Ghost of Faffner Hall (1989), a Muppet music education TV Series. She played several of the characters on Roland Rat The Series broadcasts in 1986 and 1988, Sesame Street in the early 1990s, on Mopatop's Shop in the early 2000s, and in The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) and Muppet Treasure Island (1996). In 1992, Gold played Sally Spook in The Spooks of Bottle Bay. In 1995 and 1997, she played characters on series 2 and series 3 of with Stinky and Jake, including Tizzy Bee, an early example of a computer generated image puppet.
From 1982, Gold began to appear in West End musicals. The first of these was as Isabel in the Joseph Papp production of The Pirates of Penzance (1982–83; playing the role of Edith in the 1983 film adaptation of the production). Her other stage roles in the 1980s included Divine Dixie Diva in Mrs Cole's Music Hall at the Mill at Sonning (1984–85); Katisha, Countess of Grantham, in MetroPolitan Mikado, adapted from The Mikado by Ned Sherrin and Alistair Beaton at Queen Elizabeth Hall (1985); Bev in Angry Housewives
Source: Louise Gold (CC BY-SA)
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Gold lent her voice to an Australian puppet television programme in 2006, Five Minutes More. Gold was featured as a guest puppeteer, portraying the character of Babs (the female termite), on Transmission Impossible with Ed and Oucho on BBC 2 television. She appeared in seven episodes broadcast from May to August 2009. In 2013–2014, Gold starred in That Puppet Game Show, a celebrity game show on BBC One, operating three of the puppet characters. She reprised her role as Annie Sue Pig in the 2014 film Muppets Most Wanted, also operating a Muppet kangaroo. Also in 2014, she puppeteered on the CBeebies television series The Furchester Hotel, co-produced by Sesame Street. She plays Funella Furchester, the mother in a family of "cheerfully incompetent monsters" who own a hotel for monsters. In the Netflix series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, which premiered in 2019, she voices and is the puppeteer for Maudra Argot and is also the puppeteer for The All-Maudra, skekAyuk/The Gourmand and Onica.
