Diana Payan

Diana Payan (b. 1943) is an actress who appeared in two episodes of The StoryTeller. She played the miller's wife (adoptive mother of Lucky) in "The Luck Child." In "The True Bride," she was briefly glimpsed, ala a silhouette, as the gossipy passerby who informs Anja of the Trollop's predilection towards handsome men.‎

Payan performed on BBC radio plays in the 1960s. She moved into television, appearing in a TV version of Tom Stoppard's play "A Separate Piece" (1966) and an episode of Z Cars (1968). By the 1970s, while still heard in radio plays, she was a steady television presence, as midwives, matrons, and general busybodies or bystanders. She appeared in Play for Today and other one-off plays, a TV version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the miniseries Freud, and episodes of Mapp & Lucia, Chance in a Million (with Brenda Blethyn), Inspector Morse, Pie in the Sky (with Richard Griffiths), The House of Eliott, The Bill (many appearances), Sharpe's Regiment (with Sean Bean), and the 1999 miniseries The Scarlet Pimpernel''. Recent guest appearances include Kingdom (with Stephen Fry), Wire in the Blood, The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, and a recurring role on the 2015 series SunTrap. She had a rare lead in the 2013 independent film Common People.