Wendy Richard | English actress, 65

British actress Wendy Richard, whose four-decade television career included roles as a sexy sitcom shop assistant and a working-class matriarch on

EastEnders

, died of breast cancer Thursday in a London clinic, agent Kevin Francis said.

Born Wendy Emerton, Ms. Richard was raised above the pub her parents ran in central London. She left school at 15 and worked at Fortnum & Mason before studying drama. She had parts in several of the Carry On film comedies and in TV shows including Up Pompeii! and The Likely Lads before becoming famous as Miss Brahms, a staff member of the fictional Grace Bros. store, in the 1970s sitcom Are You Being Served?

Ms. Richard was known to millions around the world as put-upon matriarch Pauline Fowler in EastEnders, a long-running soap set in an east London neighborhood. She appeared in the show's first episode in 1985 and stayed for 21 years, depicting Pauline through trials that included her daughter's teen pregnancy, her son's HIV diagnosis, and her husband's breakdown, imprisonment, and death.

Ms. Richard's cancer was diagnosed in the mid-1990s and again in 2002. She learned last year that the disease had returned and spread. - AP