English actress Kathleen Byron died 18 January 2009. Born 11 January 1921 in London, England, she had a “disquieting beauty” that, according to the Telegraph obituary, “left audiences deeply uneasy.”
While in school, she daydreamed of being an actress, and her first speaking role came in The Young Mr. Pitt (1942). She starred in Black Narcissus (1947), as “a nun with a past, a raging libido and a compulsion to revert to her former life. The climax, in which, clad in high heels, a form-flattering dress and scarlet lipstick, she does battle in the bell tower with Deborah Kerr’s character, is one of the most erotically charged sequences of its time.” It ends with Byron falling to her death. Her last role came in 2001, in Perfect Strangers.
Her genre roles include: Blakes 7 (1979), An Englishman’s Castle (1978), Supernatural (1977), Craze (1974), Nothing But the Night (1973), Twins of Evil (1971), Night of the Eagle (1962), The House in the Square (1951), and A Matter of Life and Death (1946).
The Telegraph notes that her career went through several ups and downs, never quite reaching stardom, and that she drifted into supporting roles in bigger films.
In 1943, she married USAAF pilot Lt. John Bowen, and moved with him to the States. That decade, she made three major films with Michael Powell. The Telegraph calls that time “the most productive of her career.” After her divorce in 1950, she returned to England, and in 1953, married radio journalist Alaric Jacob. He died in 1995, and she is survived by one son, one daughter, and one stepdaughter.