The teenager who charmed British TV audiences, then fooled a Hollywood director with a fake accent to land a movie role opposite Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant, has died, and the news took more than five months to surface.
British actress Georgina Cates died May 6, 2026, at 51. No cause of death had been announced as of Monday, Oct. 19.
Cates, who played the first Jenny Porter in the BBC sitcom “2point4 Children” and starred in the film “An Awfully Big Adventure,” died more than five months before word of her death spread in mid-October.
A Death That Went Unnoticed for Months
Andrew Marshall, the creator of the sitcom, spread the news on Saturday, Oct. 17, with a post 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 said 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.
Naiia Ulrich, her daughter with actor Skeet Ulrich, paid tribute to her mother on Instagram.
“My beautiful, free-spirited mom lived a hard life and still found ways to make herself and others laugh and smile,” Naiia wrote.
Skeet Ulrich, who starred in “Scream” and “Riverdale,” replied under his daughter’s post: “Love you more than words can say sweetheart.”
Married at a Virginia Farm
Cates and Ulrich 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.
A TV Breakout at Just 16
Clare Elaine Woodgate was born April 4, 1975, in Colchester, England. She landed the role of Jenny Porter at 16, her first screen role.
Jenny Porter was the teen daughter of a London household beset by bad luck and strange mishaps. Cates played her for the first two seasons, from 1991 to 1992, and actress Clare Buckfield took over the part for the show’s final six seasons.
The Disguise That Fooled a Director
Cates auditioned under her real name for the role of Stella in the 1995 film “An Awfully Big Adventure” and was turned down as too experienced. She dyed her hair red, took on a Liverpudlian accent and came back as Georgina Cates, a 17-year-old Scouser. She got the part.
Director Mike Newell adapted the film from Beryl Bainbridge’s 1989 novel, and Cates played Stella Bradshaw opposite actors Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant. The film screened in the Directors’ Fortnight section at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.
“I thought she was a great original,” Newell told The New York Times.
She drew her sharpest notices in 1998, as Amanda, a cheating wife, in the black comedy “Clay Pigeons.” Ridley Scott produced the film, David Dobkin directed it, and actors Vince Vaughn and Joaquin Phoenix co-starred.
The same year brought two more roles. Cates 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 included “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).
Cates took a seven-year break from the industry before returning with the independent film “Sinner,” which won her Best Actress at the Brooklyn Arts Council International Film & Video Festival in 2007. She appeared in “Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa” in 2013 and made her final on-screen appearance in a 2016 short, “Save Me From the Sound of the Siren,” playing Madeleine. In recent years she worked as a photographer.
