Anderson, Sylvia
Entry updated 13 October 2025. Tagged: Film, TV, People.
(1927-2016) UK writer, voice actress, costume designer and film and Television producer, best known for work created in collaboration with Gerry Anderson, her husband from 1960 to 1981. Early work as a television production assistant included the children's fantasy series The Adventures of Twizzle (1957-1959) and Torchy the Battery Boy (1959-1960), directed (the latter for season 1 only) by Gerry Anderson. She contributed characters, costume design, dialogue, plot lines and voices to the Gerry and Sylvia Anderson SuperMarionation puppet series Four Feather Falls (1960), Supercar (1961-1962) – whose end titles credit Sylvia Thamm, her first married name, as dialogue director – Fireball XL5 (1962-1963), Stingray (1964-1965), Thunderbirds (1965-1966), Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967-1968), Joe 90 (1968-1969) and The Secret Service (1969). Her best known characters were the ensemble created for Thunderbirds, including the glamorous, upper-class secret agent Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward – modelled on and voiced by Anderson herself – and her Cockney chauffeur Parker, who drove her ladyship's trademark pink Rolls-Royce.
Further credits with Gerry Anderson include the Thunderbirds films Thunderbirds Are Go (1966) and Thunderbird Six (1968), as co-author and credited producer (her husband being uncredited co-producer). They co-wrote the sf film Doppelgänger (1969). She was also involved in later live-action Anderson series: co-producing, co-writing and designing costumes for UFO (1970-1973), writing for the non-genre thriller The Protectors (1972-1974), and co-creating and producing the first season of Space: 1999 (1975-1977). During that first season the Andersons' marriage failed and Sylvia Anderson's involvement with Gerry Anderson projects ceased. Later, though, she was a production consultant for the reboot film Thunderbirds (2004) and did voice work for the animated series Thunderbirds Are Go (2015-2020). [DRL]
Sylvia Beatrice Anderson [née Thomas]
born London: 25 March 1927
died Slough, Berkshire: 15 March 2016
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