Deborah Jane Kerr-Trimmer, CBE (30 September 1921 - 16 October 2007) was a Scottish stage, television and film actress. She won the Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago performance in Tea and Sympathy, which she originated on Broadway, a Golden Globe Award for the motion picture, The King and I, and she was also the recipient of honorary Academy, BAFTA and Cannes Film Festival awards.
She was nominated six times for an Academy Award as Best Actress but never won. In 1994, however, she was cited by the Motion Picture Academy for a film career that always represented "Perfection, Discipline and Elegance". Amongst her most famous films were: The King and I, An Affair to Remember, From Here to Eternity, Heaven Knows, Mr Allison and Separate Tables.
Although the Scottish pronunciation of her surname usually sounds like "care," when she was being promoted as a Hollywood actress it was made clear that her surname should be pronounced the same as "car." In order to avoid confusion over pronunciation, Louis B. Mayer of MGM decided to bill her as "Kerr rhymes with Star!"
Deborah Kerr was born on 30 September 1921 in Helensburgh, Scotland, the daughter of Captain Arthur Kerr-Trimmer. She was educated at Northumberland House, Clifton, Bristol. She first performed at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, London. She subsequently performed with the Oxford Repertory Company 1939-40. Her first appearance on the West End stage was as Ellie Dunn in "Heartbreak House" at the Cambridge Theatre in 1943. She performed in France, Belgium and Holland with ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association, or Every Night Something Awful) - The British Army entertainment service. She has appeared in many films from her first appearance in Major Barbara (1941).
Born Deborah Jane Kerr-Trimmer in Scotland in 1921, she was the daughter of a soldier who had been gassed in World War I. A shy, insecure child, she found an outlet for expressing her feelings in acting. Her aunt, a radio star, got her some stage work when she was a teenager, and British film producer Gabriel Pascal (I) noticed and cast her in his film of George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara (1941) and Love on the Dole (1941). She quickly became a star of the British cinema, with roles such as the three women in Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The (1943) and the nun in Black Narcissus (1947). In 1947, she came to MGM, where she repeated her success in films like Hucksters, The (1947), Edward, My Son (1949) and Quo Vadis (1951). After a while, however, she tired of playing prim-and-proper English ladies, so she made the most of the role of the adulteress who romps on the beach with Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity (1953). The film was a success, and Kerr received her second Oscar nomination for the film. She also achieved success on the Broadway stage in "Tea and Sympathy," reprising her role in the 1956 film version. That same year, she played one of her best-remembered screen roles, "Mrs. Anna" in King and I, The (1956). More success followed in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Affair to Remember, An (1957), Separate Tables (1958), Sundowners, The (1960), Innocents, The (1961) and Night of the Iguana, The (1964). Then, in 1968, she suddenly quit movies, appalled by the explicit sex and violence of the day. After some stage and TV work in the 1970s and 1980s and swan song performances in Assam Garden, The (1985) and Hold the Dream (1986) (TV), she retired from acting altogether. Deborah Kerr holds the record of the most Oscar nominations (six) without a win, but that was made up for in 1994, when she was given a Honorary Oscar for her screen achievements.
