Lila Kaye

Biography

Lila Kaye (7 November 1929 – 10 January 2012) was an English actress. She spent a number of years working in the United States, on Broadway and in television, before returning to England. She often played motherly and/or comedic characters, mostly on television, including Cathy Come Home (1966) as a staff member at a homeless shelter, and My Son Reuben (1975), co-starring Bernard Spear, as a Jewish mother and her bachelor son who jointly run a dry-cleaning business. She also appeared in films including Blind Terror (1971), The Black Panther (1977) and Quincy's Quest (1979), and found film success in later years for her performances in An American Werewolf in London (1981) as the conflicted rural barmaid trying to warn off the two doomed American backpackers, in Nuns on the Run (1990) as a formidable nun, and in Reason for Living: The Jill Ireland Story (1991; an American television film), in which she played Dorothy Ireland, the real-life mother of cancer-stricken actress Jill Ireland (played by Jill Clayburgh).[1] Kaye appeared in Bert Rigby, You're a Fool (1989) as Mrs. Pennington, and in Dragonworld (1994) as Mrs. Cosgrove.

Known For

Barmaid

An American Werewolf in London

Nancy's Mother

Mr. Horatio Knibbles

Sister Mary of the Annunciation

Nuns on the Run

Mrs Clause

Quincy's Quest

Mrs Nash

Making Waves

Dorothy, Jill's mother

Reason for Living: The Jill Ireland Story

Lagrange

The Trial of Klaus Barbie

Nanine

Camille

Bertha

The Kitchen

Ms. Houston

The Return of Sherlock Holmes

Mother Polly

Eskimo Day

Mrs. Umney

The Canterville Ghost

Vi Butterfield

Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris

Mrs. Cosgrove

Dragonworld

Jane's Mother

Antonia and Jane

Gypsy Mother

See No Evil

Bawd

Pericles, Prince of Tyre

The Black Panther

Bess

A Place to Die

Ma

The Fiction Makers

Mrs. Pennington

Bert Rigby, You're a Fool

Mrs. Woolridge

Sredni Vashtar

Mrs Mordecai Smith

The Sign of Four

The Manageress

King's Cross Lunch Hour