Emerging from a working-class family in Manor Park, Essex, she honed her craft at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School before moving into film. A brief speaking part in Carol Reed’s The Young Mr Pitt (1942) led to a series of collaborations with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, where she portrayed an angel in A Matter of Life and Death (1946), the tormented Sister Ruth in Black Narcissus (1947…
