Louise Ada "Lou" Beale (née Medeemey) is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Anna Wing. She made her first on-screen appearance on 19 February 1985 and departed on 26 July 1988. The character is played by Karen Meagher in the 1988 EastEnders special, Civvy Street, set during the Second World War.
Lou Beale was the first EastEnders character to be created by series co-creator Tony Holland, taking the inspiration for some of the series' earliest characters from his own London family and background.
Lou is the archetypal East End matriarch throughout EastEnders' first three years. An intimidating force within the local community, she is the dowager of Albert Square's central family, the Beales and Fowlers. Never afraid to speak her mind, and woe betide anyone who manages to get on her wrong side, Lou has the respect of her friends and family, even if they do find her a bit of a nuisance at times.
Famous quotes containing the word lou:
“... some of my people could have been left [in Africa] and are living there. And I can’t understand them and they don’t know me and I don’t know them because all we had was taken away from us. And I became kind of angry; I felt the anger of why this had to happen to us. We were so stripped and robbed of our background, we wind up with nothing.”
—Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–1977)