Farewell to classic English rose

It's somehow ironic that Deborah Kerr is probably best remembered for sharing one of the steamiest love scenes in the history of cinema, writes our Movie Blogger Carl Jones.

Because it was the rising obsession with sex and lust on the silver screen which provoked her into controversially turning her back on Hollywood at the height of her acting powers.

They simply don't make actresses like Deborah Kerr any more. Her death at the age of 86, announced yesterday, marked the loss of one of the few remaining "great" stars to come out of Hollywood's heyday era.

She had principles, wasn't interested in the red carpet fashion parade and had little in common with the Tinseltown jet set.

She once famously said: "All the most successful people seem to be neurotic.Perhaps we should stop being sorry for them and start being sorry for me for being so confounded normal."

Her life, however, was far from normal. With a summer home in Switzerland, and a winter cottage in Marbella, Spain, Deborah Kerr came a long way from the aspiring actress living on one bar of chocolate a day at the YWCA.

Born Deborah Jane Trimmer in Scotland, she was the daughter of a soldier who had been gassed in World War One.

A shy, insecure child, she found an outlet for expressing her feelings in acting. Her aunt got her some stage work when she was a teenager, and British film producer Gabriel Pascal noticed and cast her in his film of

George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara in 1941.

She quickly became a star of the British cinema, with roles such as the three women in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and the nun in Black Narcissus, and in 1947 she joined studio giant MGM, where she repeated her success in films like The Hucksters, Quo Vadis, and Edward My Son which earned her a first Oscar nomination.

Bored with playing English rose characters, she sought to break out of her typecast, and in 1953 made From Here To Eternity with Burt Lancaster, famous for the torrid beach scene - parts of which were so daring at the time that they had to be cut out.

It earned her a second Oscar nomination, and changed her rather proper image forever. Her aura of unwitting sex appeal winning her tags such as "The Genteel Monroe"and "Sweet Kerr Named Desire".

Her allure continued. Another Oscar nomination followed with the classic musical The King And I opposite Yul Brynner in 1956, and she was nominated three more times in the next four years for Heaven Knows Mr Allison, Separate Tables, and The Sundowners.

Her legendary screen partnerships with the likes of Cary Grant with Robert Mitchum which began in the mid 1950s sparked off a chemistry that tantalised audiences and earned her around 250,000 dollars per picture.

One of her last cinema roles was as Lady Fiona, a nun with the hots for James Bond, in the ill-fated comedy 007 movie Casino Royale, opposite David Niven.

Then, in 1968, she suddenly quit movies, appalled by the explicit sex and violence of the day. After some brief stage and TV work in the 1970s and 1980s, she made a couple of forgettable TV movies, then retired from acting altogether.

Her last public appearance was way back in 1994, when she attended the Academy Awards to collect the honorary Oscar for her career achievements. It put right a long-standing wrong - despite six acting nominations, she never won.

Deborah Kerr was married twice. Her first husband was Battle of Britain hero Anthony Bartley whom she married in 1945. They had two daughters, Melanie and Francesca, but the marriage was

dissolved in 1959.

She met the writer Peter Viertel on a film set in Vienna and they were married in 1960.

Part of her attraction for him had been her robust sense of humour - a far cry from the screen image of cool, unruffled gentility.

He said: "Deborah is terribly English, upbringing marks you for life and she can't get away from Englishness. It means she has a code of correctness, of how to behave in any circumstances. It comes down to discipline, being civilised."

She too saw herself in two lights - as "a clown at heart" but at the same time she said: "I'm neat and tidy. I hate it when things are a mess. You could say I'm neat and tidy inside and out. I've never played a slut, although I was a bit ruffled in The Sundowners."

News of the actress's battle with Parkinson's Disease emerged around seven years ago. She returned to England to be near her family when her illness worsened, and it was in Suffolk that she died.

The West Midlands was the scene of one of her most distressing moments, when her 78-year-old brother Edmund Trimmer was killed in a road rage attack. The retired journalist had his jaw shattered outside a post office in Birmingham in August 2004, and died of a brain haemorrhage.

In one of her last interviews, Deborah Kerr said: "When you're young, you just go banging about, but you're more sensitive as you grow older. You have higher standards of what's really good - you're fearful that you won't live up to what's expected of you."

Deborah needn't have worried. She lived up to it all.