Celia Johnson

She was knighted and became a Dame. Elissa Landi has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to Motion Pictures, at 1615 Vine St. She was married to Peter Fleming an explorer and writer and brother of Ian Fleming. She died from cancer in Kingston, New York. She generally played a genteel and/or repressed Englishwoman, though she proved in many stage productions to be a talented comedienne. She became a United States Citizen in 1943, and dedicted herself to writing, producing six novels and a series of poems. Other films include The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). After only two more films she retired, in 1943.

She made relatively few films, of which Brief Encounter is by far the best known. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer signed her to a contract and after a couple of romantic dramas she played the cousin of Myrna Loy in the very popular After the Thin Man (1936). By 1931, she was starring as Ophelia in a New York production of Hamlet. Her contract with Fox was abruptly cancelled in 1936 as a result of her refusal to accept a particular role. Her stage début was in Major Barbara in 1928. She was paired successfully with some of the major leading men, such as David Manners, Warner Baxter, and Ronald Colman in romantic dramas, before appearing in the box office hit The Count of Monte Cristo (1934) with Robert Donat. She was born in Richmond, Surrey, and trained in acting at RADA. De Mille's The Sign of the Cross (1932), but was overshadowed by Claudette Colbert who played the flashier role of the temptress.

Dame Celia Johnson (1908-1982) was an English actress, famous for her role in the 1945 film, Brief Encounter, opposite Trevor Howard. She played the heroine in Cecil B. She was signed to a contact by 20th Century Fox in 1931. During the 1920s she appeared in British, French, and German films before travelling to the United States to appear in a Broadway production of A Farewell to Arms. She would return to writing during lulls in her acting career.

Her first ambition was to be a writer, and she wrote her first novel at the age of twenty. Born Elizabeth Marie Christine Kühnelt in Venice, Italy, Landi was raised in Austria and educated in England. Rumoured to be a descendant of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, she was noted for her aristocratic bearing. Elissa Landi (December 6, 1904 – October 21, 1948) was an Italian born actress who was popular in Hollywood films of the 1920s and 1930s.