ELIZABETH SELLARS

(6 May 1921 - 30 December 2019)

The Scottish-born actress Elizabeth Sellars, who has died aged 98, was a prominent player on stage, in films and on television. She enjoyed a long career particularly in the cinema, often playing enigmatic women of mystery, no better than they should have been. Born in Glasgow and educated in Hertfordshire, she attended Rada and then in 1940 worked for Ensa entertaining the troops overseas. Her London theatre debut was in The Brothers Karamazov in Hammersmith and she later worked at the Bristol Old Vic, the Royal Shakespeare Company and London’s West End. She made her television debut in Dr Faustus (1947) and later on did South Sea Bubble, Ordeal by Fire, Dial M for Murder, The Philadelphia Story, Pink String and Sealing Wax, The Browning Version, The Second Mrs Tanqueray and John Mortimer’s Too Late for the Mashed Potato. She was also John Mortimer’s mother in A Voyage Round My Father with Laurence Olivier. Sellars’ first film was Floodtide in 1949, followed by David Lean’s Madeleine, Hunted and The Gentle Gunman (both with Dirk Bogarde) and many British black & white thrillers such as Guilt Is My Shadow, Night Was Our Friend, The Long Memory, The Broken Horseshoe, Recoil, Forbidden Cargo, Three Cases of Murder and The Last Man to Hang, titles that often appear on the Talking Pictures channel. In Hollywood she did The Barefoot Contessa for Joseph L.Mankiewicz, Désirée with Marlon Brando, and Prince of Players with Richard Burton. She was also in The Shiralee with Peter Finch, Jet Storm with Richard Attenborough, The Day They Robbed the Bank of England with Peter O’Toole, Never Let Go with Peter Sellers, 55 Days at Peking, The Chalk Garden and The Mummy’s Shroud. After The Hireling in 1973 she worked solely in television until she retired in 1990. Elizabeth Sellars was married to Francis Austin Henley from 1960 until his death in 2009.

MICHAEL DARVELL