LONDON — Deborah Kerr, who shared one of Hollywood's most famous kisses while portraying an Army officer's unhappy wife in "From Here to Eternity" and danced with the Siamese monarch in "The King and I," has died. She was 86.
Kerr, who had Parkinson's disease, died Tuesday in Suffolk, England, her agent, Anne Hutton, said Thursday.
For many she will be remembered best for her kiss with Burt Lancaster as waves crashed over them on a Hawaiian beach in the wartime drama "From Here to Eternity."
Kerr's roles as forceful, sometimes frustrated women pushed the limits of Hollywood's treatment of sex on the screen during the censor-bound 1950s.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated Kerr six times for best actress, but it never gave her an Academy Award until it presented an honorary Oscar in 1994 for her distinguished career as an "artist of impeccable grace and beauty, a dedicated actress whose motion picture career has always stood for perfection, discipline and elegance."
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She had the reputation of being a "no-problem" actress.
"I have never had a fight with any director, good or bad," she said toward the end of her career.
Kerr (pronounced "car") was the only daughter of a civil engineer and architect who died when she was 14. Born in Helensburgh, Scotland, she moved with her parents to England when she was 5, and she started to study dance in the Bristol school of her aunt.
She later switched to drama and began playing small parts in repertory theater.
She was invited to Hollywood in 1946 to play in "The Hucksters" opposite Clark Gable. She went on to work with virtually all the other top American actors and with many top directors, including John Huston, Otto Preminger and Elia Kazan.
In "From Here to Eternity," playing an Army officer's alcoholic, sex-starved wife in a fling with Lancaster's Sgt. Warden opened up new possibilities for Kerr.
She played virtually every part imaginable, from murderer to princess to a Roman Christian slave to a nun.
Among her other movies is "An Affair to Remember," with Cary Grant.
Nominations
Deborah Kerr's best-actress Oscar nominations were for:
• "Edward, My Son" (1949)
• "From Here to Eternity" (1953)
• "The King and I" (1956)
• "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" (1957)
• "Separate Tables" (1958)
• "The Sundowners" (1960)
SOURCE: The Associated Press
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