Anna Lee, MBE (2 January 1913 – 14 May 2004), born Joan Boniface Winnifrith, was an English actress.
Only six stories (the pilot Anna Lee: Headcase (1993) (TV) and the five episodes of this series) were filmed. Author Liza Cody stopped writing Anna Lee mystery novels because of the television movies. The rights had already been purchased for any future Anna Lee novels that she might write. However because she was unsatisfied with the way that the previous books had been adapted, she said she wouldn't write any more of them; instead she focused on the Eva Wylie books.
The daughter of a clergyman, Anna Lee was born Joan Boniface Winnifrith and encouraged to pursue an acting career by her father. After training at London's Royal Albert Hall, she took to the boards and later began appearing in English films, first as an extra, then working her way up to featured parts and finally earning the unofficial title "Queen of the Quota Quickies." Lee and her husband, director Robert Stevenson (I), relocated to Hollywood in the late 1930s, and Lee began starring in stateside productions as well as becoming a fixture of the John Ford (I) stock company (she appeared in How Green Was My Valley (1941), Fort Apache (1948) and a half-dozen others). In 1970, she became the seventh wife of novelist, poet and playwright Robert Nathan (II) (Portrait of Jennie (1948), Bishop's Wife, The (1947)); they married three months after they met. Now widowed, Lee soldiers on, regularly playing wealthy Lila Quartermaine on the TV soaper "General Hospital" (1963).
