Catherine Lacey


Catherine Lacey was an English actress of stage and screen.

Stage

Lacey made her stage debut, performing with Mrs Patrick Campbell, in The Thirteenth Chair at the West Pier Brighton on 13 April 1925. Her first appearance in the West End was in July 1926 in Cock o' the Roost at the Garrick Theatre.
Her other West End credits included The Beetle, The Venetian, The Green Bay Tree, After the Dance, The Late Edwina Black, Tiger at the Gates, The Tiger and the Horse and I Never Sang for My Father.
Having acted at Stratford and the Old Vic in 1935/36, she returned to both companies in later years: to the Old Vic in 1951 and 1962, and to the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967, playing Volumnia in Coriolanus and the Countess of Rousillon in All's Well That Ends Well.

Screen

She made her film debut in 1938 as the secretive nun who wears high heels in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, in which she was credited as Catherine Lacy. Her film credits include I Know Where I'm Going!, The October Man, Whisky Galore!, The Servant and The Fighting Prince of Donegal, in which she played Queen Elizabeth I. In 1966/67 she played a malevolent fortune-teller in The Mummy's Shroud and Boris Karloff's insane wife in Michael Reeves' The Sorcerers. For the latter, she won a 'Silver Asteroid' award as Best Actress at the Trieste Science Fiction Film Festival in 1968.
Eight years earlier, she received the Guild of TV Producers and Directors award as Actress of the Year. Her television debut in 1938 was in a BBC production of The Duchess of Malfi. Her last appearance in 1973 was in the Play for Today installment Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont.

Personal life

She was married to and divorced from the British actors Roy Emerton and Geoffrey Clark.

Partial filmography