24 Facts About Dilys Laye

Dilys Laye was born in London, the daughter of Edward Charles Lay and his wife Margaret, nee Hewitt.

Dilys Laye returned home to a new stepfather and a mother who was keen to transfer her frustrated theatrical ambitions to her daughter.

Dilys Laye was educated at St Dominic's Sixth Form College, Harrow and trained for the stage at the Aida Foster School.

Dilys Laye made her stage debut at the New Lindsey Theatre Club, Notting Hill in April 1948, playing a boy, Moritz Scharf, in The Burning Bush, Noel Langley's drama about state persecution of Jews.

Dilys Laye had her first film role in 1949 in Trottie True playing Trottie as a child, and made her first television appearance the following year in a revue, Flotsam's Follies.

At the Hippodrome in May 1953 Dilys Laye appeared in the revue High Spirits, starring Cyril Ritchard and Diana Churchill, in a supporting cast including Ian Carmichael, Joan Sims and Patrick Cargill.

Dilys Laye made her Broadway debut in September 1954, playing Dulcie in the musical The Boy Friend opposite Julie Andrews, with whom she shared a flat for much of the 485-performance run.

At Her Majesty's Theatre in December 1957 Dilys Laye played Estell Novick in a non-musical comedy, The Tunnel of Love.

Dilys Laye then joined Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop company to play Redhead in a musical adaptation of Wolf Mankowitz's novel Make Me an Offer, seen first at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East in October 1959 and then at the New from December.

Dilys Laye's notices were excellent, but she later commented that she did not work with Littlewood again, "and you can draw your own conclusions from that".

In 1962 Dilys Laye made her first of four appearances in the Carry On films, replacing an unwell Joan Sims as Flo Castle in Carry On Cruising at three days' notice.

Dilys Laye returned as Lila in Carry On Spying, Mavis Winkle in Carry On Doctor and Anthea Meeks in Carry On Camping.

In 1968 Dilys Laye moved from light comedy to play Mrs Shin in Bertold Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan at the Oxford Playhouse, with Hancock in the title role.

Dilys Laye continued in the role in May 1974 when the production transferred to the Aldwych Theatre, London.

Two years later, at the Old Vic, Barnes directed The Frontiers of Farce, a double bill of his adaptations of one-act plays by Frank Wedekind and Georges Feydeau, in which Dilys Laye starred with Leonard Rossiter, John Stride and John Phillips.

Actress and playwright worked together on three more radio presentations in the 1970s: his adaptations of Wedekind's Lulu, in which she played Countess Geschwitz and of Thomas Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, described in the Radio Times as "a bawdy Jacobean black comedy", and between these two adaptations Dilys Laye appeared with Barnes in The Two Hangmen, a radio cabaret of songs, poems and sketches by Wedekind and Bertolt Brecht.

In 1981 Dilys Laye appeared in, and co-wrote, the ITV comedy series Chintz.

Dilys Laye continued her association with Barnes, playing Lady Dunce, described as "a married 'widow'" in his radio adaptation of Thomas Otway's comedy The Soldier's Fortune, and in the same year performed The Theory and Practice of Belly-Dancing, one of Barnes's monologues for radio written for specific performers including John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier.

Dilys Laye had leading roles in two further Barnes adaptations for the BBC: Helen in Wedekind's The Singer and Catherine in Feydeau's Le Bourgeon, given as The Primrose Path.

Dilys Laye featured as Madame de Rosemond in a revival of Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the Playhouse Theatre in 2004, receiving the Clarence Derwent Award for best supporting actress.

Dilys Laye kept her illness secret from the rest of the cast, but was too ill to transfer with the production to London.

Dilys Laye married three times: first to Frank Maher, a stuntman, and then in 1963 to the actor Garfield Morgan; they subsequently divorced.

Dilys Laye died in 1995 after years of ill health following a stroke.

Dilys Laye outlived her doctors' predictions by six months, and lived to see her son's marriage.