Diana Churchill

Diana Josephine Churchill (21 August 19138 October 1994) was an English actress. Churchill was a crisp, classy blonde with blue eyes who appeared in several British films, playing the sardonic heroine in a handful of comic chillers during the early 1930s. She was mainly a theatre actress into the war years and after, an actress for "all theatrical seasons" who was "renowned for her versatility in playing Shakespeare, Restoration comedy, farce, Chekhov and revue". Early life and education Churchill was born on 21 August 1913 in Wembley, London, where her family resided in Crawford House. One of three sisters, she was the daughter of Ethel Mary Churchill (née Nunn), of the substantial "Nunn" coal merchant family, and Joseph Henry "Harry" Churchill , a doctor of medicine. She is of distant relation to Winston Churchill and his daughter, Diana, who was also an actress. Her father descended from a younger brother of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, who "had an affair with an actress". Churchill attended St Mary's School, an independent girls' boarding school in Wantage, and the Guildhall School of Music in London. On leaving school, she persuaded her father to let her train for the stage. Career