Celia Johnson

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Dame Celia Elizabeth Johnson DBE (18 December 1908–26 April 1982) was an English actress, famous for her role in the 1945 film, Brief Encounter, opposite Trevor Howard, for which she received her only Oscar nomination.

She was born in Richmond, London and was educated at St Paul's Girls School in London. She trained in acting at RADA. Her stage début was in Major Barbara in 1928. By 1931, she was starring as Ophelia in a New York production of Hamlet.

She made relatively few films, of which Brief Encounter is by far the best known. Other notable films include In Which We Serve (1942), The Captain's Paradise (1953),This Happy Breed (1944), I Believe in You (1952) and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). She generally played a genteel and/or repressed Englishwoman, though she proved in many stage productions to be a talented comedienne.

She was married to Peter Fleming, an explorer and writer who was a brother of Ian Fleming, from 1935 until his death in 1971.

She was created a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1958, and raised to Dame Commander (DBE) in 1981.

She died at home in Nettlebed, Oxfordshire, following a stroke in 1982, at the age of 73, survived by her 3 children. One is the actress Lucy Fleming, a star of the 1970s BBC science-fiction drama series Survivors.