| Gill Fowler | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EastEnders character | |||||
| Portrayed by | Susanna Dawson | ||||
| Duration | 1991–92 | ||||
| First appearance | 28 May 1991 | ||||
| Last appearance | 25 June 1992 | ||||
| Classification | Former; regular | ||||
| Profile | |||||
| Date of death | 25 June 1992 | ||||
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Gill Fowler (née Robinson), played by Susanna Dawson from 1991 to 1992, is the first wife of Mark Fowler (Todd Carty). Gill met Mark in Newcastle during 1989 and they lived together until 1990 when Gill tested positive for HIV and moved to London. Mark discovered that he was HIV positive as well and returned to Walford.
The following year, Gill was diagnosed as having AIDS and visits Mark to ask if he has been tested for HIV. At first Mark denies that he has the virus but later admits to her that he is HIV positive. They are never certain which of them had contracted the virus first.
They soon rekindle their relationship and Gill marry Mark on 23 June 1992, but she dies in a hospice the following day.
Susanna Dawson who played Gill found the experience of playing a person living with and dying from AIDS so intense that she co-produced an educational video based on the subject for use in schools and wrote a book, The Gill and Mark Story, to accompany it.
In October 1999, All About Soap magazine placed Mark and Gill's wedding at number six on their twenty greatest soap weddings list. The magazine said "Knowing Gill was so close to dying from AIDS, Mark decided his final act of commitment would be to marry her. Sadly, she died in his arms later that afternoon in what remains one of soap's most tear-jerking weddings of all time."
Read more about this topic: List Of East Enders Characters (1991)
Famous quotes containing the words gill and/or fowler:
“Culture is a sham if it is only a sort of Gothic front put on an iron building—like Tower Bridge—or a classical front put on a steel frame—like the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. Culture, if it is to be a real thing and a holy thing, must be the product of what we actually do for a living—not something added, like sugar on a pill.”
—Eric Gill (1882–1940)
“As a Tax-Paying Citizen of the United States I am entitled to a voice in Governmental affairs.... Having paid this unlawful Tax under written Protest for forty years, I am entitled to receive from the Treasury of “Uncle Sam” the full amount of both Principal and Interest.”
—Susan Pecker Fowler (1823–1911)