The family of Harry Potter actor Leslie Phillips is heading for a High Court dispute over his multi-million-pound estate after his widow declined to leave the couple’s London home.
Zara Carr, who married Phillips in 2013 when he was 89 and she was in her mid-50s, has remained at the £4.4 million property since the actor’s death in 2022.
Phillips, a much-loved screen veteran who appeared in around 150 films, suffered a serious stroke in 2015 and had been recuperating at his west London home in the years before he died.
The actor died at home in November 2022 at the age of 98. Details of his will, which valued his estate at £5.2 million, were made public for the first time in August 2024.
The will, drafted four years before his death, directed that the house should be sold two years and nine months after he died, setting a deadline of August 2025.
Under its terms, the money raised from the sale was to be placed in a trust and divided between Carr, Phillips’s third wife, and his four children from his first marriage.
The arrangement would require Carr to move out, but she has remained in the property, reportedly maintaining that Phillips promised she could live there for the rest of her life.
Case details filed on Tuesday show the disagreement is now set to be heard at the High Court in London, where Phillips’s children will face Carr in a legal battle over the estate.
Leslie Phillips married Zara Carr in 2013 when he was 89 and she in her mid-50s
Leslie Phillips with Zara Carr at their wedding blessing in London in December 2013
Zara Carr has been living in the £4.4million home in west London since Leslie Phillips died
‘Don’t Just Lie There, Say Something!’ starred Leslie Phillips, Joanna Lumley and Brian Rix
The case listed the claimant as ‘Terrell (as executor of the estate of Leslie Samuel Phillips CBE deceased), Martin Edward’ – referring to solicitor Martin Terrell. The defendant was named as ‘Phillips, Zara Elizabeth’.
The case was listed as a ‘Probate Part 8 claim – inheritance (provision for family/dependants)’. A ‘Part 8’ means there are no substantial disputes of fact.
Carr previously threatened legal action fearing she might have to move out of their marital home after Phillips’s affairs were placed under administration by his solicitor under the terms of the Mental Capacity Act.
But upon learning of the High Court case, she told The Sun outside her home yesterday: ‘I am very surprised. I had no idea about any of this. Leslie’s children have not been in touch with me at all.
‘If they want me to come to court, I will do. I will come to court and fight it if I must. I am planning to stay put. I have no plans to move out – this is my home.’
Phillips was known for his ‘Ding Dong’, ‘Well, Hello’ and ‘I Say’ catchphrases in the Doctor and Carry On films and also voiced the Sorting Hat in the Potter movies.
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Former air stewardess and social worker Carr, who had been previously widowed, first met Phillips on a zebra crossing close to his home.
He suffered a stroke one year after they married, and she cared for him at the house over the following eight years.
Leslie Phillips weds first wife Penny Bartley at All Souls Church in St John’s Wood in 1948
(from left), Andrew, one; Leslie Phillips, Claudia, four; Penny Bartley and Caroline; six, in 1955
Leslie Phillips with his second wife, the former Bond Girl Angela Scoular, who died in 2011
Leslie Phillips played the voice of the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter films franchise
Leslie Phillips and Barbara Roscoe in the 1964 comedy film Father Came Too!
Carr gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation when he turned ‘black and blue’ during a seizure in 2015, which had followed his stroke.
Phillips had two sons and two daughters by his first wife – Caroline, Claudia, Andrew and Roger – to each of whom he left £50,000, and nearly three-quarters of the shares in the trust fund the will established.
His 15 grandchildren each received £5,000.
Carr was left £155,000, plus ten of her late husband’s belongings – each worth up to £1,500 – and more than a quarter of the shares in the trust fund.
Phillips was born in Tottenham, North London, on April 20, 1924, into a working-class family and made his first film appearances as a child in the 1930s.
He was still working before his stroke, acting in several British TV dramas including the Ruth Rendell Mysteries, Revolver and Agatha Christie’s Marple.
Phillips’s first wife Penny Bartley, who he stayed in touch with after their divorce, died in a house fire in 1981.
His second wife, the former Bond Girl Angela Scoular whom he married in 1982, died in 2011 after drinking a corrosive cleaning liquid.
The Daily Mail has contacted Mr Terrell for comment.
