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| Birth Name(s) : Deborah Jane Kerr-Trimmer |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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Partner:
Anthony Bartley (1945-1959) |
| Profession:
N/A |
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Full Deborah Kerr Biography
Deborah Kerr, CBE (30 September 1921 – 16 October 2007) was a Golden Globe Award-winning Scottish actress who also received honorary Academy and BAFTA awards.
Her most famous films were The King and I, An Affair to Remember and From Here to Eternity. She was nominated six times for an Academy Award as Best Actress but never won. She was cited by the Academy for a film career that always represented "Perfection, Discipline and Elegance".
Her debut was in the British film Contraband in 1940 but her scenes were left on the cutting room floor. She followed that with a series of other films, including Hatter's Castle (1942), in which she starred opposite Robert Newton and James Mason. The following year, she played the triple role of the hero's loves in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. During the filming, according to Powell's autobiography, she and Powell became lovers.
I realised, said Powell, that Deborah was both the ideal and the flesh-and-blood woman whom I had been searching for.
It was her role as a troubled nun in Black Narcissus in 1947 which brought her to the attention of Hollywood producers: the film was a hit in the US as well as the UK, and Kerr won the New York Film Critics' Award as Actress of the Year. In Hollywood, her British accent and manners led to a succession of roles portraying a refined, reserved, and proper English lady. Nevertheless, Kerr frequently used any opportunity to discard her cool exterior. In the 1950 jungle adventure film King Solomon's Mines, shot on location in Africa with Stewart Granger and Richard Carlson, she impressed audiences with a sexuality and an emotional vulnerability that brought new dimensions to a male-oriented action film.
Kerr also departed from typecasting with a performance, that brought out her sensuality, as Karen in From Here to Eternity (1953) for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. The American Film Institute acknowledged the iconic status of the scene from that film in which she and Burt Lancaster make love on a Hawaii beach amidst the crashing waves. The organization named it one of "AFI's top 100 Most Romantic Films" of all time.
From then on Kerr's career choices afforded her one of the most versatile screen personas in Hollywood, ranging from nuns (Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison) and mamas' girls (Separate Tables) to an earthy Australian sheep-herder's wife (The Sundowners) to lustful and beautiful screen enchantresses (Beloved Infidel, Bonjour tristesse) and comedy (The Grass is Greener).
Her most famous roles are, probably, as Anna Leonowens in the film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I and opposite Cary Grant in An Affair to Remember. In 1966, the producers of Carry on Screaming offered her a fee comparable to that paid to the rest of the cast combined to appear in the film, but she turned it down in favour of appearing in an aborted stage version of Flowers for Algernon. In 1967, at the age of 46, she achieved the distinction of appearing as a Bond Girl in Casino Royale.Deborah Kerr in Julius Caesar (1953)
In 1969, pressure of competition from younger, upcoming actresses made her agree to appear nude in John Frankenheimer's The Gypsy Moths. This would be the only nude scene in Kerr's career. Concern about the parts being offered to her, as well as the increasing amount of nudity in films in general, led her to abandon film work at the end of the Sixties in favour of television and theatre work.
As a stage actress, Deborah Kerr made her Broadway debut in 1953 in Robert Anderson's Tea and Sympathy, for which she received a Tony Award nomination. Kerr repeated her role along with her stage partner John Kerr (no relation) in Vincente Minnelli's film adaptation of the drama. In 1955, Kerr won the Sarah Siddons Award for her performance in Chicago during a national tour of the play. In 1975, she returned to Broadway, originating the role of Nancy in Edward Albee's Pulitzer-winning play Seascape.
The Theatre, despite her success in films, was always to remain Kerr's first love, even though going on stage filled her with trepidation, as she said :
Stewart Granger revealed in his autobiography that Kerr had tried to seduce him in the back of a London cab in 1950.
Kerr was the patron of the National Society for Clean Air and Environmental Protection (NSCA) from 1992 until her death from the effects of Parkinson's disease on October 16, 2007 at the age of 86 in the village of Botesdale, Suffolk.
For her contributions to the motion picture industry, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1709 Vine Street.
Deborah Kerr was nominated six times in the category of Best Actress:
- 1949 - Edward, My Son
- 1953 - From Here to Eternity
- 1956 - The King and I
- 1957 - Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison
- 1958 - Separate Tables
- 1960 - The Sundowners
She equalled Thelma Ritter for the distinction of receiving the most nominations for an actress for an acting Academy Award, without actually winning. It should be noted that her nominations were all for Best Actress, while Ritter's were all for Best Supporting Actress.
Unsuccessful Nominations for Award for Best British Actress:
- 1955 - The End of the Affair
- 1956 - Tea and Sympathy
- 1961 - The Sundowners
- 1964 - The Chalk Garden
Unsuccessful Nomination in the category of Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or a Special:
- 1985 - A Woman of Substance |
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