Deborah Kerr : a biography

Blessed with a natural beauty that faded but little over the years, Scotland-born actress Deborah Kerr (1921-2007) provided the cinema with memorable studies of English gentility.

A star in British pictures before she was 21 and a Hollywood fixture from 1946, she projected a cool reserve and stoic nobility, often hinting at a passion and insecurity beneath the surface.

Frequently portraying selfless, sympathetic women, she was brilliant in such roles as Anna Leonowens in The King and I (1956). And in a fascinating departure from her normal range, Kerr's portrayal of the sexually frustrated Army wife in From Here to Eternity (1953) resulted in the screen's most famous ""clinch""--the beach scene with Burt Lancaster.

Though she never won an Academy Award despite six nominations, Deborah Kerr received an honorary Oscar in 1994.