The actor Liz Fraser, who has died aged 88, specialised in comedy in a career that stretched from cough and spit parts in 1950s Ealing Studios films to a guest star suspect in the latest series of Midsomer Murders (2018). She also worked with Tony Hancock and Sid James, and starred in the classic I’m All Right Jack (1959) with Peter Sellers, but her long and varied career was almost inevitably overshadowed by her membership of the Carry On team.

The slap and tickle British film institution of innuendo and pratfall, awash with music hall one-liners, Carry On celebrates its 60th anniversary this year and remains as popular as ever, a reassuring never-never land of off-colourjokes, whose occasional sexism, racism and homophobia is somehow muted by the sheer exuberance of the performers. Typecast as a cheery blond bombshell, Liz appeared in four films, joining the established team of Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Kenneth Connor and Hattie Jacques for film number five, Carry on Regardless (1961).

She played Delia King, a staunchly feminist element of the Helping Hands agency, in place to do anything for anybody. This was followed by Carry on Cruising (1962), the first Carry On in colour, in which she was the fun-seeking holidaymaker Glad Trimble, and then the part of the more world-weary Sally in Carry on Cabby (1963).

A decade later she was back for Carry on Behind (1975), maturing from the eyelash-fluttering sex symbol of the earlier films to an embittered housewife putting paid to the amorous plans of her off-the-leash butcher husband, played by Windsor Davies. The following year she joined fellow cast members Peter Butterworth and Jack Douglas in the Scarborough summer season stage show Carry on Laughing.

Back in harness after the sudden death in 1974 of her husband, the television director Bill Hitchcock, Liz continued to embrace the thriving market for saucy comedy films, playing sexually confident matriarchs opposite gauche young men: Robin Askwith in Confessions of a Driving Instructor, and Barry Evans in Adventures of a Taxi Driver and Under the Doctor (all 1976).

Liz herself always maintained that her early glamour girl roles had a virginal quality about them. Indeed, even as a happy-go-lucky stripper in Doctor in Love (1960), the coquettish policewoman in The Pure Hell of St Trinian’s (1960) or the nautical fun-seeker Sandra in Double Bunk (1961), there was an endearing innocence at play.

Double Bunk remained her favourite film, allowing her to polish an effortless working relationship with Sid James that would enhance many a British comedy. She worked with him on Hancock’s Half Hour, and when the BBC gave James his own series, Citizen James, from November 1960, Liz played his hapless, ever-tolerant girlfriend.

She was also fiercely proud and protective of her friendship with Hancock. Lizwas a valued part of his repertory company on radio, film and television, as often as not rebuffing his amorous advances with a look of disgust. Hancock loved it.

Liz was equally candid about her knowing association with Sellers. Doggedly avoiding Sellers’ relentless charms off the set, she was cast by John and Roy Boulting as Cynthia Kite in the industrial relations satire I’m All Right Jack. It was Liz’s breakthrough film role, and her performance as the daughter to Sellers’ militant, Russia-obsessed shop steward Fred Kite won her a Bafta nomination for most promising newcomer, and made her a glamour icon; Sellers won the Bafta for best actor. Four months later the two were reunited for the prison caper comedy Two-Way Stretch (1960), with Liz now playing Sellers’ girlfriend.

Philosophical about the fact that comedy roles dominated her career, Liz took pride in her theatre work. She played Lizzie in the first West End production of James Saunders’ Next Time I’ll Sing to You (New Arts Theatre, 1963) in a cast including Michael Caine and Barry Foster. She starred opposite Warren Mitchell and Betty Marsden in John Patrick’s jet black comedy Everybody Loves Opal (Vaudeville, 1964) and joined Kenneth Griffith and Caroline Mortimer in the avant-garde Don’t Let Summer Come (Mermaid, also 1964). Regional tours saw her play Cyrenne in Rattle of a Simple Man, the Countess Skriczevinsky in Terence Rattigan’s Flare Path (1980), the Widow Corney in Oliver!, and Mrs Lovett, opposite Brian Murphy’s Sweeney Todd.

Film and television roles rarely allowed such opportunities to stretch her acting muscles. An early attempt to switch from comedy to drama on the big screen proved unsuccessful and Liz was self-deprecating about her disastrous performance as Jo Lake in Lance Comfort’s The Painted Smile (1962).

However, more dramatic character roles eventually came, including the lead role of Delilah, an ageing model and actor, in the TV drama Sight Unseen (1977), an episode in the She anthology series. Here Liz essayed a touching performance of faded beauty.

In 1988 she again drew on personal experience – she had cancer three times – to bring poignancy to the character of Mrs Dewey, an elderly woman dying of cancer, in Eskimos Do It (1988), part of the BBC2 Screenplay series. The previous year she had had a small but intense role as the gin-soaked mother Mrs Brent in Miss Marple: Nemesis.

Other television roles included Doris Entwhistle in the sitcom Fairly Secret Army (1984-86), starring Geoffrey Palmer, and she had guest appearances in many series including The Avengers, The Goodies, Jason King, Robin’s Nest, Rumpole of the Bailey, Birds of a Feather, Last of the Summer Wine and Foyle’s War.

Born Elizabeth Winch in Southwark, south London, she was the daughter of a travelling salesman father, who died when she was 11, and a mother who owned a small shop off the New Kent Road that sold practically everything. In September 1939 she was evacuated to Crockham Hill in Kent, close to Winston Churchill’s Chartwell estate; the prime minister would often visit his evacuee neighbours. Next to having dinner with Judy Garland, this was Liz’s favourite name-drop.

Liz went to St Saviour’s and St Olave’s grammar school for girls and later trained at the London School of Dramatic Art. She made her stage debut with the Red Rose Players repertory company at the New Hippodrome, Accrington, in Lancashire in 1953, before joining the chorus in Babes in the Wood at the Brighton Hippodrome. Soon afterwards she adopted her stage name from a brand of biscuit.

Her first marriage in 1958, to Peter Yonwin, ended in divorce. She married Hitchcock in 1965.

Her last stage appearance came in riotous conversation with me at the Museum of Comedy, Bloomsbury, in central London, in July this year. The previous month we had commemorated 50 years since the death of Hancock with an interview and plaque unveiling at his old school, Bradfield college, Berkshire. Put up in a local hotel by the Tony Hancock Appreciation Society the night before the event, Liz was asked by the receptionist what her profession was. With a twinkle in the eye, she answered: “Film star, dear!”

• Liz Fraser (Elizabeth Joan Winch), actor, born 14 August 1930; died 6 September 2018