Deborah Kerr Net Worth

Deborah Kerr's Quotes

• All the most successful people these days seem to be neurotic. Perhaps we should stop being sorry for them and start being sorry for me--for being so confoundedly normal.
• I came over here [Hollywood] to act, but it turned out all I had to do was to be high-minded, long suffering, white-gloved and decorative.
• I am really rather like a beautiful Jersey cow, I have the same pathetic droop to the corners of my eyes.
• [speaking in 1969] When I was under contract to MGM, with people like poor Robert Taylor and so many others, the cinema's job was solely entertainment. It filled a public need then. Now the cinema serves so many other purposes; it functions as psychiatrist, politician, message-maker, money maker and, incidentally, entertainer. But it's no good regretting that things are different. Times have to change.
• When you're young, you just go banging about, but you're more sensitive as you grow older. You have higher standards of what's really good; you're fearful that you wont live up to what's expected of you.

Interesting Facts about Deborah Kerr

1. Similar to her losing streak at the Oscars, she was finally awarded a BAFTA "Special Award" in 1991 after being nominated four times. She did, however, win the New York Film Critics Award three times and the Golden Globe Award for The King and I (1956).
2. Her last public appearance was in 1994 when she was awarded an honorary Oscar after six failed nominations over the years. Along with Thelma Ritter, she is one of the few actresses to have received six nominations and not have won an Oscar. On Oscar evening, Glenn Close presented a special tribute to her work, and the Oscar audience watched clips of her films to music. She then appeared from behind the screen, obviously frail, in a blue pastel trouser suit and received a standing ovation from her peers. A life-long shy person, she said, "I have never been so terrified in my life, but I feel better now because I know that I am among friends. Thank you for giving me a happy life." Following this, there was another standing ovation and she left the stage, her exit becoming her last official goodbye to Hollywood. Ironically, Close herself has since passed Kerr with seven nominations and Ritter's record, receiving six nominations with--so far--no wins.
3. She was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1998 Queen's New Year Honours List for her services to drama.
4. Has two daughters from her marriage to Anthony C. Bartley: Melanie Jane Bartley (born December 27, 1947) and Francesca Anne Bartley (born December 18, 1951). Bartley was a WWII Royal Air Force squadron leader.
5. Her singing voice was dubbed by Marni Nixon in The King and I (1956).
6. Suffered from Parkinson's disease.
7. Joan Crawford was originally meant to play her role in From Here to Eternity (1953), but when she insisted on shooting the film with her own cameraman, the studio balked. It decided to take a chance and cast Kerr, who then was struggling against her ladylike stereotype, to play the adulterous military wife who has an affair with Burt Lancaster. The casting worked and her career thereafter enjoyed a new, sexier versatility.
8. Maureen O'Hara was originally meant to play her role in The King and I (1956), but Yul Brynner specifically asked for Kerr.
9. Mother-in-law of John Shrapnel, who married her daughter Francesca Shrapnel. She is, thus, also the grandmother of writer Joe Shrapnel and actors Lex Shrapnel and Tom Shrapnel.
10. Her brother Ted Trimmer was killed in a road-rage incident at the age of 78 (August 2004).
11. When she was a young girl, she had a strict "Victorian" grandmother who made her lie on her back, on the floor, for long periods of time, in order to "straighten her back" and ensure good posture.
12. She is the great-aunt of Benjamin Viertel.
13. In Italy, almost all of her films were dubbed by either Lydia Simoneschi or Renata Marini. She was occasionally dubbed by Dhia Cristiani, Andreina Pagnani and once by Gemma Griarotti in Quo Vadis (1951).
14. Was romantically involved with Burt Lancaster while filming From Here to Eternity (1953).
15. Originally when filming began on Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), her co-star Robert Mitchum worried that Kerr would be like the prim characters she frequently played. However, after she swore at director John Huston during one take, Mitchum, who was in the water, almost drowned laughing. The two stars went on to have an enduring friendship that lasted until Mitchum's death in 1997.
16. Lived in Switzerland and Spain after retiring from acting, but returned to England to be with her family when her Parkinson's disease worsened.
17. Her surname is pronounced "car", not "care" or "cur".
18. Her signature in cement for Graumans Chinese Theater in Hollywood was actually cast on the set of The King and I (1956) and not at the theater.
19. Patron of the National Society of Clean Air and Enviromental Protection in Britain from 1992 until her death in 2007.
20. Her aunt Phyllis Smale, running the Hicks-Smale Drama School in Bristol, became her first acting coach.