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Tributes are being paid to Mona Hammond, the highly influential Jamaican-British actress known for her roles in EastEnders, Doctor Who, and Desmond's, who has died at age 91.
News of Hammond's passing was shared on Twitter by Marcus Ryder, the chair of London's RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) theater school, where she studied in the 1960s. 
The BBC reports that Hammond was born in Jamaica in 1931, then emigrated to the U.K. in her late twenties to work for an architecture firm. After attending evening acting classes, she won a scholarship to RADA and began performing regularly on stage and screen after she graduated in 1964.
In 1986, she co-founded the Talawa Theatre Company, a trailblazing organization dedicated to performing plays for and about the Black British Community. Hammond would go on to appear with one of her fellow co-founders, Carmen Munroe, in the iconic Channel 4 sitcom Desmond's, which ran from 1989 to 1994.
Later, she portrayed matriarch Blossom Jackson in EastEnders from 1995 to 1997, and then again for a two-episode stint in 2010. She appeared in Doctor Who in 2006 as Rita-Anne Smith, the grandmother of Noel Clarke's Mickey Smith. 
In a tribute shared with The Guardian, David Harewood acknowledged Hammond's impact on his own career, and to future generations of Black British actors.
"She was one of the founding members of Talawa, the company that gave me my first professional job, and that supports and encourages today’s generation of Black artists to strut their stuff on the stage," he wrote. "Indeed, it’s almost as if she were all our mothers and we all her children, standing on her shoulders, winning awards and being invited into spaces that she could have only imagined when she began her journey."
In 2005, Hammond was awarded an OBE by Queen Elizabeth II for services to drama. She is survived by her son, Matthew.
Rest in Peace, and thank you for your contribution.