Kathleen Byron (born 11 January, 1923 in London) is an English actress of stage, screen and television.
She trained at Bristol's Old Vic Drama School before making her film debut in Carol Reed's The Young Mr Pitt (1942), in which she had two lines as a maid opposite Robert Donat.
She remains best known for her roles in the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger: as an angel in A Matter of Life and Death (1946), as leading lady opposite David Farrar in The Small Back Room (1949), and, most memorably of all, as the disturbed Sister Ruth in Black Narcissus (1947). Byron was romantically linked with Michael Powell around the time the film was made.
Her success in Black Narcissus led her to Hollywood, which resulted with a supporting role in Young Bess (1953). She found the experience an unrewarding one and soon returned to Britain. Her subsequent roles of the time were mostly in B-Movies. In the 60s and 70s she did mostly television work, including the role of Mme Celeste Lekeu in two episodes of the BBC drama Secret Army in 1977, a brief stint on the soap opera Emmerdale Farm in 1979, and a small role as Queen Louise of Denmark in Edward the Seventh in 1975.
Byron has continued to act into the 1980s, 1990s and the new millennium, her film/TV work having included David Lynch's The Elephant Man (1980), the 1996 adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma, Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Stephen Poliakoff's series, Perfect Strangers (2001).
In 1953 she married the British journalist and writer Alaric Jacob, who was then working for the BBC. They had a son and daughter.
Kathleen Byron trained for the stage at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, beginning her work in the movies soon after she finished her training. Her early work with Michael Powell (I) made her name in the UK. She went to Hollywood in the 1940s and 50s but found it difficult to break into the US productions. Mainly because although everyone greatly admired her performance as Sister Ruth in Black Narcissus (1947), she was typecast and only expected to be able to play neurotic characters.
