Raven haired, sometimes blonde (particulary in the earlier years), pretty actress who was born in 1934. Dilys Laye is an actress who is capable of a wide range of roles, from straight drama to comedy. Starting in the 1950s; she started like most other British film actresses of her era in studio system style films. One of her first films was Paper ...
My mother always loved the theatre and wanted to be an actress herself. She would have loved me to go to the RADA and become a proper actress but I'd already seen Dolores Gray in "Annie Get Your Gun", so I had other ideas.
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Theatre companies are like families and these days of course I'm the mother, dispensing tea and sympathy to anyone who needs it.
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I've been lucky to play so many different types of women, from a sexy nightclub singer to Mrs Sparsit in Hard Times and I'm still having as much fun as I did when I started, which isn't bad going after 60 years, is it?
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[Speaking about Pinewood Studios and the Carry On films] "We were an elite. It was like being at school, we belonged there."
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Fact
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Educated (1944-1947) at St. Dominic's Convent, Harrow-on-the-Hill, and trained in theatre (1947-1949) at the Ada Foster Stage School.
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Made her Broadway debut as Dulcie, Polly's friend, in the musical "The Boyfriend" when the London production transferred to New York in 1954. She co-starred with Julie Andrews (as Polly) and the two shared a Manhattan apartment for the duration of the run.
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Her father was a musician who abandoned the family when she was 8.
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For the last 20 years she lived off Wimbledon Common in the house where she nursed her sick husband, the actor/writer Alan Downer, until his death in 1995. The stress of caring for him brought on her own serious illness but she recovered.
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Educated at St Dominic's Convent, Harrow-on-the-Hill, northwest London, she trained for the stage at the Aida Foster School and made her first appearance as a child in 1948 as Moritz in The Burning Bush at the New Lindsey Theatre.
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Daughter of Edward Lay and his wife Margaret (née Hewitt).
Replaced Joan Sims in Carry on Cruising (1962) three days before filming commenced. The producers rushed Dilys around London in order to get her fitted with costumes in time.
$1.9 Million
