Matters improved when, freed from the constraints of her MGM contract, she committed adultery in the surf in From Here to Eternity (1953). It brought her a second Oscar nomination and several memorable films. She was Oscar nominated again for The King and I (1956); Tea and Sympathy (1956); Heaven Knows, Mr Alison (1957) - another Oscar nomination; An Affair to Remember (1957); a fifth Oscar nomination for Seperate Tables (1958), and The Sandowners (1960) brought yet another Academy nomination.

The Academy went a small way (and when I say 'small' I mean a fraction) to compensating her for never having won when, in 1994, she was presented with an honorary Oscar in recognition of:

"an artist of impeccable grace and beauty, a dedicated actress whose motion picture career had always stood for perfection, discipline and elegance."

In 1960, after her divorce from her husband Anthony Bartley, by whom she had two daughters (Melanie Jane, born on December 27, 1947 and Francesca Ann), Kerr married Peter Viertel and moved to Switzerland. In 1964 she made The Night of the Iguana and her salary had risen to $250,000. She retired from the screen after The Arrangement (1969) and though in the early 1980s she appeared in a couple of things on TV it wasn't until 1985 that she re-emerged on the screen to give a poignant performance in The Assan Garden. It was her last film before the onset of illness. She suffers from Parkinson disease.

Because of illness she no longer signs autographs.

In August 2004, her brother, Edmund Trimmer (78) was murdered in a road rage incident in the Midlands, UK.

Her scene in her first film, Contraband, was cut out completely.

It was announced on 18th October that Deborah Kerr died at the age of 86 in Suffolk on Tuesday 16th, her agent said. She had lived in Switzerland but returned to England to be near her family when her illness worsened.

She leaves a husband, the novelist and screenwriter Peter Viertel, two daughters and three grandchildren.

She was really one of the last links to the golden age of cinema. With her passing, we have lost a true icon of British cinema. All that remains is what she left on the silver screen but boy what a legacy. I guess for most that would be the 1950s films like From Here to Eternity and The King and I but for me I think you have to go back a decade to see her best work and the British films she made for Powell & Pressburger, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) an, in particular, Black Narcissus (1947). But that is just a personal opinion and those films from the 1950s do stand the test of time.

I feel somehow that we as moviegoers of today are somehow short-changed. I mean moviegoers of the 1950s had Deborah Kerr; what do we have as an equivalent? Sienna Miller.

Can I have my money back??