Stage and Film Great Deborah Kerr Dies at 86

Deborah Kerr, the British actress of stage and screen best remembered for playing Anna in the 1956 film version of The King and I and for her starring role in the 1953 classic From Here to Eternity, died on October 18. She was 86 and had suffered in recent years from Parkinson's disease.

Born Deborah Jane Kerr-Trimmer on September 30, 1921, in Helensburgh, Dunbartonshire, and educated in Bristol, Kerr made her first stage appearance in 1937 in the mime play Harlequin and Columbine and studied ballet at Sadler's Wells. After breaking into the movies in the early 1940s, Kerr juggled stage and screen roles for the rest of her career. She appeared on Broadway twice, in Tea and Sympathy in 1953 reprising her starring role as the headmaster's sympathetic wife in the 1956 film version and in Edward Albee's Seascape in 1975. That same year, she appeared in a Los Angeles production of Souvenir. Her final stage appearance was in an Old Vic production of The Corn Is Green in 1985.

Known as regal, ladylike presence on the big screen, Kerr was nominated for six Academy Awards. Her best known films included From Here to Eternity, An Affair to Remember, Heaven Knows Mr. Allison, The Sundowners and The King and I, opposite original Broadway star Yul Brynner. One of her final film performances was as a Bond girl in Casino Royale, released in 1967.

Kerr was married twice, to Anthony Bartley, with whom she had two children, and Peter Viertel.