Jean Margaret Hodgkinson^[1] (11 October 1926 – 14 October 2016), known by the stage name Jean Alexander, was a British television actress. She was best known to television viewers for her long running role of Hilda Ogden in the soap opera Coronation Street, a role she played from 1964 until 1987, and also as Auntie Wainwright in the long-running sitcom Last of the Summer Wine from 1988 to 2010. For her role in Coronation Street, she won the 1985 Royal Television Society Award for Best Performance, and received a 1988 BAFTA TV Award nomination for Best Actress.

Jean Margaret Hodgkinson was born at 18 Rhiwlas Street in the Toxteth area of Liverpool, Lancashire in 1926, to Nell and Archie Hodgkinson; her father worked as an electrician and the family lived in a terraced house with no indoor lavatory. Alexander had an elder brother, Kenneth. She aspired to become an actress from an early age, and later said that she was inspired by variety acts she saw at the Pavilion theatre in her home city. She attended St Edmund's College for Girls in Princes Park, Toxteth^[2] and as a teenager, she joined an amateur theatre group and took elocution lessons.^[3]

Alexander spent five years as a library assistant in Liverpool before she began her acting career in 1949 at the Adelphi Guild Theatre in Macclesfield.^[3][4] She first appeared as Florrie in Sheppey by Somerset Maugham.^[3] She later worked in rep in Oldham, Stockport and York. Most of her parts were minor,^[3] and she also worked as a wardrobe mistress and stage manager. Her television debut is variously given as in the police series Z-Cars^[4] (1962) or in Deadline Midnight (1961).^[3]

Alexander never married, stating that she put her acting career first.^[3] She was a close friend of her Coronation Street husband, Bernard Youens.^[3] Her autobiography, The Other Side of the Street: The Autobiography of Jean Alexander, was published in 1989.

She lived for many years in Southport, Merseyside, and in 2009 she joined with others to campaign successfully for a temporary library in the town while the central library was being refurbished.^[12] She was a keen gardener^[13] and after her death was commemorated in the town with a memorial bench at Southport Flower Show, where she was a regular visitor.^[14][15]

She donated her 1955 Qualcast Panther lawnmower to the British Lawnmower Museum in the town, where it is still on display.^[14][16][17]

Alexander announced her retirement in 2012, two years after her last television appearance. Her acting career lasted for more than 60 years.^[18] She celebrated her 90th birthday on 11 October 2016, but was taken ill and died three days later in Southport Hospital.^[15][19][20]