Penelope Wilton, the veteran stage and screen actress who is best known internationally now for her appearances in "Downton Abbey" as Maggie Smith's sparring partner Isobel Crawley, has been made a Dame in the Queen's Birthday Honors, announced June 11. She has been Olivier-nominated five times for her stage appearances at the National Theatre in Man and Superman, The Secret Rapture and John Gabriel Borkman, at the Almeida in The Deep Blue Sea and at the Donmar Warehouse in The Chalk Garden. She won the Olivier for Taken at Midnight, which transferred from Chichester to the West End's Theatre Royal Haymarket.

Other honourees include Shakespearean scholar Stanley Wells, who is to be knighted; veteran actor (and Mount Everest climber) Brian Blessed, who receives an OBE; Tom Morris, artistic director of Bristol Old Vic and co-director of the Tony winning War Horse, who receives a CBE; and Felix Barrett, co-founder of immersive theatre company Punchdrunk, who receives an MBE.