Kathleen Elizabeth Fell (11 January 1921 – 18 January 2009), known professionally as Kathleen Byron, was an English actress.
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Early life and education
Byron was born in Manor Park (then part of Essex) to what she described as "staunch working-class socialists," the daughter of a railway clerk who later became Labour Party mayor of the County Borough of East Ham. She attended the local grammar school and trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
Career
Byron's first speaking film role was in Carol Reed's The Young Mr. Pitt (1942), in which she had two lines as a maid opposite Robert Donat. During World War II, she worked in Censorship and had appearances in several shorts for the British government's Crown Film Unit.
After Byron moved to the United States with her first husband, director Michael Powell persuaded her to return to Britain where she made perhaps her best remembered films. She was cast in several films of the Powell and Emeric Pressburger partnership: as an angel in A Matter of Life and Death (1946), the disturbed Sister Ruth in Black Narcissus (1947, for which she was nominated for Best Actress by the New York Film Critics' Circle), and in The Small Back Room (1949). Her success in Black Narcissus eventually led her to Hollywood, which resulted in a supporting role in Young Bess (1953). She found the experience unrewarding and soon returned to Britain. Her subsequent roles of the time were mostly in B-films.
On television, Byron had a recurring role from 1959 to 1963 as Margaret de la Roux in the soap opera Emergency Ward 10, portraying the alcoholic wife of the consultant gynaecologist Harold de la Roux (John Barron). In the 1960s and 1970s, Byron did extensive television work, including a 1961 appearance in a Danger Man episode entitled "Name, Date and Place" as Deidre; Crown Court (episode: "A Case of Murder"); a small role as Queen Louise of Denmark in Edward the Seventh (1975), Madame Celeste Lekeu in two episodes of the BBC drama Secret Army (1977), entitled "Bait" and "Good Friday", a brief stint on the soap opera Emmerdale Farm in 1979, and one of the leads in the daytime soap Together (1980–81, its second series broadcast live).
Byron continued to act into the 21st century, her film, theatre and television work including Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap (1990), an adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma (1996), Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998), Midsomer Murders (1999) (as Dorothea Pike in S2:E2 "Strangler's Wood") and Stephen Poliakoff's series, Perfect Strangers (2001).
Personal life and death
In 1943, Byron married USAAF pilot, Lt. John Daniel Bowen, and moved to the United States. Byron was romantically linked with Michael Powell for a time, and he was named as a co-respondent when her first marriage was dissolved in 1950. In 1953, Byron married her second husband, the British journalist and writer Alaric Jacob (who predeceased her); Jacob was then working for the BBC. They had one son and daughter; with a child from Jacob's previous marriage.
Byron died on 18 January 2009, aged 88, at Denville Hall in Northwood, London. According to her stepdaughter, Byron had been suffering from cancer and Alzheimer's disease.
