Patricia Hilliard

Patricia Penn-Gaskell (Patricia Hilliard), actress: born Quetta, India 14 March 1916; married 1938 William Fox (one son, one daughter); died Ditchling, East Sussex 19 May 2001.

Patricia Hilliard was a star of the West End theatre and screen during the 1930s and 1940s. Her film credits include some of the most memorable of that period ­ Alexander Korda's The Private Life of Don Juan, The Ghost Goes West with Robert Donat, and the now cult classic Things to Come. On stage and screen she enjoyed a 30-year career before finally moving into broadcasting.

Tall, olive-skinned and raven-haired, Hilliard was born in 1916 in India. Her father was a Major Penn-Gaskell, and her mother the actress Ann Codrington. After her parents' divorce, her mother married the actor Stafford Hilliard.

Following their return to London, Patricia joined Rada, where she stayed for two years. In her last term she caught the eye of the film producer Irving Asher. Jack Warner had engaged the American Asher to oversee production at his newly acquired studios on the Thames in Teddington, Middlesex, in 1931. Over the next 13 years the studio produced more than 100 films, most of which were for home consumption only and never released in the United States.

Patricia Hilliard was among the first actresses to sign a two-year contract. Others included Winna Winifried, Joan Marion, Muriel Angelus and Janice Adair. Marion, who later worked with Hilliard on two pictures and on stage, remembers her as "a ravishing beauty" and very popular at the studio.

After working a stint as an extra and modelling for some of London's biggest department stores, she got her break playing opposite Douglas Fairbanks Snr in The Private Life of Don Juan (1934). "Douglas Fairbanks had been one of my earliest film idols along with Rudolph Valentino and Lillian Gish," she recalled in 1998:

By the time of Don Juan he was an ageing 50-something who hadn't worked in two years. He was no longer capable of the stunts that brought him international fame and adulation. Away from the camera his private life was in turmoil. He had separated from Mary Pickford and was having liaisons with much younger women . . .

Although critically acclaimed, Don Juan was to be Fairbanks's final film.

Nineteen thirty-five was a busy year for Hilliard. Aside from making her theatrical début in The Copy, she made a further three films, including René Clair's The Ghost Goes West, in which she played the love interest to Robert Donat, The Girl in the Crowd, directed by Michael Powell, and Full Circle, in which she took the role of Jeanne Westover.

The Observer wrote of the following year's Things to Come,

There has never been anything in the cinema like Things to Come. No film, not even Metropolis, has even slightly resembled it. An extraordinary thing, a miracle has happened in the cinema.

Produced by Alexander Korda and written by H.G. Wells, it has been hailed as one of the greatest films of all time. It will certainly be remembered for its rousing score, stunning art deco sets and accurate prediction of the Second World War. "We had no idea of the impact Things to Come would have on the consciousness of the British public until it was made," Hilliard remembered:

To find it being celebrated and to find myself as a cult among science-fiction fans has given me a great sense of achievement.

A year later and she combined her stage and film career, touring the country with Back to Methuselah, and appearing as Judy Deveral in Up the Garden Path in the West End. The film director Tim Whelan was so struck with her beauty that he hired her without an audition for Farewell Again.

In June 1938 Hilliard married the actor William Fox. A month later, they were eating at the Savoy Grill in London when the writer J.B. Priestley, who was sitting at the next table, came over and asked whether they would consider playing the leads in his play I Have Been Here Before at the Royalty Theatre. "I have never seen two people more in love," he said.

From the birth of their first child, Alexandra, in 1940 and for the next three years, Hilliard took a break from her career to concentrate on her family. A son, Nicholas, was born in 1942.

After the war, Hilliard never returned to film, but decided to work solely on stage. She did a nationwide tour playing Catherine in Wuthering Heights in 1945, and scored a great success the same year as Clara in Pygmalion. She played Linda Medbury in Noose (1947) and was reunited with Joan Marion for Q in 1948. School for Scandal (1948) had her working alongside her husband for the first time in a decade.

In the 1950s Hilliard joined the BBC Repertory Company and concentrated on a career in broadcasting, retiring in the early 1960s.

Away from the limelight, she continued an avid interest in the arts. With her husband at the Garrick Club, she often met up with old friends ­ Sir Michael Hordern, Sir John Gielgud, Joan Marion ­ before or after a visit to the theatre.

Her continued popularity among film enthusiasts both amused and surprised her. "In what other profession," she asked, "would you be remembered so many years after you had left?"

Howard Mutti-Mewse