British actress Georgina Cates, who played the first Jenny in the BBC sitcom “2point4 Children” and starred in the film “An Awfully Big Adventure,” died May 6, 2026, at 51.
No one has announced a cause of death as of Oct. 20. The Sun, in its coverage, reported that Cates had died “suddenly.”
‘Our 1st Jenny in 2p4’
Her death went unreported for more than five months. The news spread on Saturday, Oct. 17, when Andrew Marshall, the creator of the sitcom, posted the news 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.
Marshall added that he knew nothing beyond what was on IMDb. He offered his sympathies to her family and children, and he asked anyone with more information to share it.
A Daughter’s Instagram Post in June
Her family had said as much months earlier. Naiia Ulrich, her daughter with actor Skeet Ulrich, wrote in an Instagram post 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,” she wrote.
Skeet Ulrich, who starred in “Scream” and “Riverdale,” left a comment under his daughter’s post: “I love you more than words can say sweetheart.”
Cates and Ulrich met at an Oscar party and married in 1997 at their farm in Madison County, Va. Their twins, Naiia and Jakob, were born in 2001, and the couple divorced in 2005, after eight years. Her children survive her.
From Colchester to Cannes
Cates 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 — the teen daughter in a London household forever beset by bad luck and strange mishaps — in her first screen role. She played Jenny for the first two seasons, from 1991 to 1992, and Clare Buckfield took over the part for the show’s final six seasons.
Cates auditioned under her real name for the role of Stella in “An Awfully Big Adventure” (1995) and was rejected. So she dyed her hair red, adopted a Liverpudlian accent and came back as Georgina Cates, a 17-year-old working-class Scouser — a native of Liverpool. 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. The film premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes. Newell said he had been conned; he was angry at first, then decided the ruse was good for show business.
Cates said in a 2016 interview that she had always been odd, and that she ran away from home for a day at 13 to find herself an agent.
She drew her sharpest notices 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. The 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 include “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).
Seven Years Away, Then ‘Sinner’
Cates took a seven-year break from the industry and returned with the independent film “Sinner.” She 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, and her final on-screen appearance was as Madeleine in a 2016 short, “Save Me From The Sound Of The Siren.” In recent years she worked as a photographer.
Amelia-Elizabeth Downey, a close friend of Cates, told Variety she remembers the actress as “a brilliant artist, an exceptionally talented photographer, and a wonderfully creative individual.”
Downey also wrote of Cates: “She developed a remarkable body of portrait photography and worked with numerous actors, both as a photographer and a coach.”
