Born in India to a British railway clerk, Margaret Lockwood was educated at London's Italia Conti School. After training for an acting career at RADA (several years after her official stage debut at age 12), she made her first film in 1935, billed as Margie Day. After a series of inconsequential ingenues, Lockwood was given a role with teeth in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938). She had a brief Hollywood career (two films' worth) in 1939, then returned to England, where throughout the 1940s she specialized in beautiful but diabolical adventuresses. She left the screen in favor of the stage in 1955, then made a long overdue return to films in The Slipper and the Rose (1976). Books on Lockwood's career include her own autobiography Lucky Star (1955) and Hilton Tims' Once a Wicked Lady (1989). Margaret Lockwood was the mother of British film actress Julia Lockwood.
by Hal Erickson
biography
