Celia Imrie

Celia Imrie is an English actor and writer known for a stage and screen career that ranges from Acorn Antiques to Calendar Girls and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Her memoir The Happy Hoofer appeared in 2011, recounting her ambition to dance, the unpredictability of acting work, and comic mishaps across a performing life. She later turned to fiction with Not Quite Nice, the first novel in her Nice trilogy. The story follows Theresa, a retired Londoner who begins a new life in Bellevue-sur-Mer on the French Riviera and discovers that the local expatriate circle carries complications behind its agreeable surface. Imrie draws on years of living in the region, using food, friendship, family demands, and reinvention to give the ensemble comedy emotional weight. Not Quite Nice continues through Nice Work (If You Can Get It) and A Nice Cup of Tea. Together, The Happy Hoofer and Not Quite Nice show how Imrie transfers a performer's ear for timing and character from autobiography into warm, observant fiction.