Deborah Kerr

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Image:DeborahKerr.jpg Deborah Kerr CBE (born 30 September, 1921) is a Scottish actress and a recipient of an Honorary Oscar for a motion picture career that has always stood for perfection, discipline and elegance. .

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Biography

She was born Deborah Jane Kerr-Trimmer in Helensburgh, by the Firth of Clyde, and originally trained as a ballet dancer, first appearing on stage at Sadler's Wells in 1938. Having switched careers, she found immediate success as an actress.

Her debut in the British film, Contraband, in 1940 was left on the cutting room floor. But that was followed by a series of other films, including the triple role of the hero's loves in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. It was her role as a troubled nun in Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus in 1947 which brought her to the attention of Hollywood producers.

Although the Scottish pronunciation of her surname is straightforward, when she was being promoted as a Hollywood actress, her last name was pronounced the same as "car". In order to avoid confusion over pronunciation, the slogan "Kerr rhymes with Star" was used.

Her "English" accent and manner led to a succession of roles, of which the only real departure from stereotype was in From Here to Eternity (1953) in which she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress. Her most famous roles were as the governess Anna Leonowens in the film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I and for her role opposite Cary Grant in An Affair to Remember. A stage actress, in 1955 she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre. In 1969, she appeared nude in John Frankenheimer's The Gypsy Moths.

She experienced a career resurgence in the early 1980s playing Emma Harte in the television adaptation of Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Woman of Substance.

Deborah Kerr has been married twice. First, on 28 November 1945, she married Squadron Leader Anthony Bartley. They had two daughters, Melanie Jane, born on 27 December 1947 and Francesca Ann. She and Bartley divorced in 1959. On 23 July, 1960, she married writer Peter Viertel.

For her contributions to the motion picture industry, Deborah Kerr has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1709 Vine Street.

In 1998 she was appointed a Commander of the British Empire.

She suffers from Parkinson's disease at home in Switzerland where she has long resided.

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Filmography

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Oscar nominated performances

Deborah Kerr has been nominated for six Academy Awards in the category of Best Actress:

Having never actually won the award, she is tied with Thelma Ritter for the most nominations for a female actor for an acting Oscar without winning. She was, however, awarded an honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards for the year 1993 in recognition of the "perfection, discipline and elegance" of her screen work.

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External links

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