Kay Walsh graced the British Cinema of the 1930s and 1940s as a leading lady, before maturing into character roles. She was born Kathleen Walsh in London, England of Irish parentage. She and her sister Peggy were raised in Pimlico by their grandmother. She began her career as a dancer in the chorus of several Andre Charlot revues, before performing...
I was never in the big time, and I don't remember ever wanting to be in the big time. I enjoyed working, just working.
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[on her first marriage] "David warned me that life with him would be very difficult. He had damaged so many women and he didn't want to damage me. Being in love with David was a killer, and how I survived I don't know."
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I can't remember a time when I didn't dance. My first memory of a public performance was darting into Church Street, Chelsea, and dancing to a barrel organ, aged three.
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I loved the cinema but had no dreams to be an actress. I didn't think I would be good enough. I really wanted to be a writer.
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My favourite role was the old barmaid in The Horses Mouth, with Alec Guinness. I wore a horrible black wig.
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"It was a flea pit and smelled. There was a woman at the piano with the light shining on her, and another woman who pumped disinfectant into the air. I thought it had the scent of sweet lavender, and that the palace - my palace - was the most wonderful place in the world." Referring to an cinema where her grandmother used to drop her off for the afternoon.
One of her best known roles was as Nancy in Oliver Twist (1948), directed by her then husband David Lean. She disliked this role as Lean would not allow her look as dirty or "more damaged" as she felt the role required.
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Her relationship with David Lean was best described as torrid and tormented, but even Lean's final wife, Sandra, once told a reporter: "She was terribly in love with him, and although she was an actress, she was in no way a prima donna. Truthfully, I think he should have stayed with her.".
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She played the doomed Nancy in Oliver Twist (1948), a film for which she wrote a much-hailed opening sequence. She contributed the wordless opening montage, showing the title character's mother give birth violently, amid gathering storm clouds and wind-raked tree branches. She said her inspiration was a film she had seen as a child that had long haunted her.
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Stepmother of Peter Lean from her first marriage and the adoptive mother of Gemma Jaques from her second.
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