Jenny Agutter is returning as Roberta Waterbury in a sequel to The Railway Children more than 50 years after the original film.
The Call The Midwife star, 68, will be joined by Sheridan Smith and Sir Tom Courtenay for The Railway Children Return, with filming beginning later this month.
Jenny first starred in the BBC’s 1968 TV series aged 16, reprising the role two years later in the feature film, also starring Dinah Sheridan, Bernard Cribbins, Sally Thomsett and Gary Warren.
It told the story of a mother and her three children who move to the Yorkshire countryside after their father is falsely imprisoned.
The book, written by E Nesbit, was originally published in 1906. Lionel Jeffries’s film is remembered not least for the heartbreaking scene in which Roberta, is reunited with her father on a train platform.
She previously said how the book always reduced her to tears.
“Knowing that Nesbit lost her father when she was five or six means that I can’t actually read that passage without feeling upset,” she says.
Directed by Morgan Matthew, the new film will be shot in key locations from the original, including Oakworth Station in Haworth, West Yorks, and The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway.
*The Railway Children Return will be released on April 1, 2022.
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