Born in Durban to Orthodox Jewish parents, Annabel Linder has been a major star for many years in South African show business - as a cabaret artist, singer, comedienne and actress. In serious vein, she starred in Fraud (1973), an off-beat movie thriller produced and directed by Donald Monat that was inspired by a real-life stock exchange swindle. 

During the Seventies, Annabel played in many hundreds of radio plays, series and serials produced in Johannesburg. "You could be anything and do anything on radio," she later commented. "I once spoke to myself, playing a mother and a daughter in conversation because some or other actress didn't pitch up!" 

She has worked in several American-backed films made in South Africa including Lunarcop (1994), Operation Delta Force II: Mayday (1998) and Never Say Die (1995), as Mrs Viccaro, coincidentally alongside fellow Avengers actor, Hal Orlandini. More recently, she has featured in the TV series Beaver Falls (2012) and the films Nothing for Mahala (2013), Konfetti (2014) and Kite (2014).

Annabel has appeared extensively on stage and television in South Africa in a wide variety of roles. She has received great acclaim for her work in live theatre and was noted in 2015 as the only  comedienne on the South African cabaret circuit.

She has been nominated 12 times for awards in theatre, TV and radio, winning five of them - for Rose, Chicago, Heroes, Tale of an Allergist's Wife and Torch Song Trilogy. Her performance in Rose (2001), a one-character play about an 80-year-old Holocaust survivor, was undoubtedly a career highlight. In each performance she held the stage alone for more than two hours.

by Donald Monat with Alan Hayes