Jane Freeman was born Shirley Ann Pithers on 12 June 1935 in Brentford, Middlesex, the daughter of railway engineer Arthur Pithers and his wife Joan. When Jane was nine years old her father died in an accident, and she moved with her mother to Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales following her mother's remarriage to Russell Evans. She grew up in Merthyr Tydfil and trained at the Cardiff College of Music and Drama, now the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, graduating in 1955.
After early stage work with the Osiris Repertory Theatre, the Arena Theatre in Sutton Coldfield and Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Freeman began building a busy career in television, including early roles in Crossroads and the BBC's Play for Today strand. In 1973 she joined the cast of Last of the Summer Wine as Ivy, the sharp-tongued but warm-hearted café owner, a role she went on to play for the whole of the show's 37-year run.
Freeman appeared in 273 episodes of Last of the Summer Wine and was one of only two actors, alongside Peter Sallis, to feature in every series of the programme from its 1973 pilot through to its conclusion in 2010. She also appeared in a 1983 stage version of the show, and became widely recognised for a long-running series of television advertisements for John Smith's Yorkshire Bitter, playing the wife of Gordon Rollings' character.
Away from Last of the Summer Wine, Freeman's stage and screen credits included The Black Adder, Silas Marner and the 1982 film Scrubbers. She was married to theatre director Michael Simpson from 1971 until his death in 2007. Jane Freeman died on 9 March 2017 at the age of 81.