Sylvia Young, who has died aged 85, nurtured the childhood talents of some of British show business’s biggest names, from singers such as Amy Winehouse, Rita Ora and the Spice Girl Emma Bunton to the actors Keeley Hawes and Billie Piper.
She opened the Sylvia Young theatre school in central London in 1981 and, during its first decade, provided the newly launched BBC soap EastEnders with stars including Adam Woodyatt, Letitia Dean, Nick Berry and Danniella Westbrook. She also trained young performers who went straight into featured roles on the West End stage, such as Denise van Outen in Les Miserables and Nicola Stapleton (later of EastEnders) in Aspects of Love.
Then, in 1994, when the director Sam Mendes auditioned 3,000 children for his revival of Oliver! at the London Palladium, he found five of the six juvenile leads and almost half of the other young cast members, among Young’s “babies”, as she called them.
Although her classes included males such as Matt Willis, of the pop group Busted, and the actors Steven Mackintosh and John Pickard, many of those who went on to find success were female. “We produce girls with bottle,” said Young, who survived a tough upbringing in London’s East End. “We develop confidence.”
The Sylvia Young theatre school opened with 27 pupils and became one of a small band of performing arts establishments offering full-time courses to those aged between 10 and 16. It grew to accommodate more than 200 pupils, along with a staff of 20, providing both training as performers and an academic education from qualified teachers.
Monday to Wednesday were spent on standard school lessons, while Thursday and Friday were reserved for the performing arts. “My aim was to prove that coming to a stage school would not be detrimental to a child’s general education,” said Young. Dean Gaffney, who joined EastEnders in 1993, recalled that the end of each week “turned into a complete Fame school, with people singing down the hallways and tracksuits instead of school uniform”.
Saturday and summer classes were also established, as well as two affiliated agencies to seek work: Young ’Uns for pupils and Rossmore Management for others over 16.
Providing places for those on scholarships and bursaries was important to Young, who said: “I’ve never wanted it to be purely for children of the wealthy.” She encouraged her charges to learn talents across the board – singing, dancing and acting – and to consider associated jobs such as casting agents, camera operators or writers.
Other graduates of the school include Naomi Campbell, Samantha Janus, Kellie Bright, Nicholas Hoult, Dani Behr, the singer Dua Lipa, three members of the girl band All Saints and the casting director Tony de Freitas, as well as Adele Silva, Sheree Murphy and Isabel Hodgins, who all joined the ITV soap Emmerdale.
Contrary to some reports, Winehouse was not expelled, said Young, who told the Guardian in 2022 that the future singing sensation was “very clever” but “very naughty”, finding the academic work too easy and becoming bored. “I liked her tremendously.”
Young was born Sylvia Bakal in Whitechapel, east London. Her mother, Sophie (nee Wexler), was of Romanian heritage, while her father, Abraham, who served in the 17th/21st Lancers, had parents from Belgium and Romania, After the second world war he worked as a tailor’s presser, then owned a betting shop.
Evacuated to live with a mining family in a village outside Barnsley in 1943, Sylvia returned to London after the war to be brought up, the eldest of nine children, in a three-bedroom council flat. Finding peace at her local library, she read hundreds of plays as a child.
On leaving Skinners’ Company school, Stamford Hill, in north London, at 16 she took a clerical job before working for Stoke Newington Libraries (1956-57), then – despite suffering stage fright – acting with the amateur repertory company at Mountview Theatre Club (1957-65). She became a stay-at-home mother following the births of her two daughters by Norman Ruffell, whom she married in 1961.
Helping to stage a fundraising show for her girls’ primary school, Aldersbrook, in 1972 led her to create its Young ’Uns company, performing old-time music-hall routines for charity. When pupils started to call her Sylvia Young-un, she adopted the name.
From 1973 she ran a singing and drama group in Manor Park, east London, before setting up a Saturday school six years later in the Notre Dame de France church near Leicester Square. In 1980 this moved to the premises of a boys’ club in Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and became the Sylvia Young theatre school the following year. A relocation to Marylebone shortly afterwards was followed in 2010 by a move to Marble Arch.
Among Young’s pupils over the years was her own elder daughter, Frances Ruffelle, whom she expelled for bad behaviour. “I was 15 years old, a wayward teenager who talked back, and my mother decided she couldn’t teach me,” said Ruffelle, who went on to star in West End musicals such as Les Miserables and Chicago. Young’s other daughter, Alison, also acted, ran Rossmore Management and eventually became managing director of the school in 2015.
Young was made OBE in 2005 and won a special recognition Olivier award in 2022.
Her husband and children survive her, along with four grandchildren, the pop singer Eliza Doolittle, Nat, Felix and Coral.
• Sylvia Young (Sylvia Bakal), stage school principal, born 18 September 1939; died 30 July 2025
