Barbara Everest

Biography

Barbara Everest (born in Southfields, Surrey, 1890; died 1968) was a British actress who worked on both the stage and in film. Most of her career unfolded in Britain, although she reached wider audiences through the large Hollywood productions of the 1940s.

She made her screen debut in 1916 in The Man Without a Soul and spent the following two decades in supporting roles in British pictures, many of them modest in scale. On stage she played Queen Anne in the historical play Viceroy Sarah (1935). Her best-known screen role came as Elizabeth, a somewhat deaf servant, in Gaslight (1944). Around the same years she appeared in Jane Eyre and The Phantom of the Opera (both 1943), as well as Mission to Moscow (1943). She became a reliable character actress, often playing matrons, servants, aunts and nuns in brief but memorable parts.

Her legacy rests chiefly on Gaslight, which remains the film for which she is most often remembered. Her final screen role, in Franchette: Les Intrigues (1969), came after her death in 1968.

Key films

• The Man Without a Soul (1916): her screen debut, in a supporting role in British silent cinema.
• Jane Eyre (1943): as Lady Ingraham in the adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's novel.
• Gaslight (1944): as Elizabeth, the somewhat deaf servant, her most celebrated role.
• Mission to Moscow (1943): as Mrs. Litvinov in Michael Curtiz's political drama.
• El Cid (1961): as the Mother Superior in Anthony Mann's epic.