Sonia Dresdel

Birth : 1909-05-05, Hornsea, Yorkshire, England, UK

Death : 1976-01-18

History

Sonia Dresdel (5 May 1909 - 18 January 1976) was an English actress, whose career ran between the 1940s and 1970s. She was born Lois Obee in Hornsea, East Riding of Yorkshire, England and was educated at Aberdeen High School for Girls. Her leading role in the 1947 film While I Live gained her a great deal of acclaim. In the film she plays Julia Trevelyan, a spinster living in a lonely cliff top house in Cornwall and haunted by the death of her sister 25 years earlier. Her most noted role was that of "Mrs. Baines" in the 1948 film version of Graham Greene's The Fallen Idol, which starred Ralph Richardson and Michèle Morgan. The film received Academy Awards nominations for Best Director (Sir Carol Reed) and Best Screenplay. She died of undisclosed causes, aged 66.

Profile

Movies

Lady Caroline Lamb

Lady Pont

Lady Caroline Lamb, dissatisfied in her marriage, has an affair with the dashing Romantic poet Lord Byron.

The Break

Sarah

A group of inmates escape from Dartmoor prison. They hide out in the English country side but are doggedly chased by police.

The Trials of Oscar Wilde

Lady Wilde

At the height of his fame, Oscar Wilde angers the Marquis of Queensberry by having what is believed to be a romantic relationship with Queensberry's son Lord Alfred Douglas, who is twenty years Wilde's junior. When Queensberry slanders Wilde, the artist decides to take the matter to court and brings about his own downfall.

Now and Forever

Miss Fox

A rich young society girl falls in love with a car mechanic. Her family is appalled and stops her seeing him. The girl attempts to commit suicide and then decides to elope.

The Clouded Yellow

Jess Fenton

After leaving the British Secret Service, David Somers (played by Trevor Howard) finds work cataloging butterflies at the country house of Nicholas and Jess Fenton. After the murder of a local gamekeeper, suspicion (wrongfully) falls on their niece, Sophie Malraux (Jean Simmons). Somers helps Sophie to escape arrest and they go on the run together. After a cross-country chase they arrive at a coastal city with the intention of leaving the country by ship. All's well that ends well after the true identity of the murderer is revealed.

The Third Visitor

Steffy Millington

Suave supercilious Carling (Karel Stepanek) receives several callers to his isolated house, all of whom hold a grudge against him. Next morning a corpse is found, and later identified as his by one of the visitors.

The Fallen Idol

Mrs. Baines

Phillipe, the son of an ambassador in London, idolizes Baines, his father's butler, a kind of hero in the eyes of the child, whose perception changes when he accidentally discovers the secret that Baines keeps and witnesses the consequences that adults' lies can cause.

This Was a Woman

Sylvia Russell

The woman here is Sylvia Russell, who is a bit power mad and has some set goals. In order to achieve those goals she is sadistically devoted to her son and daughter, able to possess and direct them; subtly ruins her daughter's marriage by corrupting a servant girl and, then, uses her to compromise her son-in-law; slowly breaks her bumbling, unambitious husband's confidence, finds in her husband's executive friend the man she desires, and then poisons her husband in her own manner in their quiet English manor

While I Live

Julia Trevelyan

In 1922, young pianist and composer Olwen Trevelyan, troubled and sleepless over her inability to finish the final notes of her composition, falls to her death from the cliffs of Cornwall. 25 years on, Olwen has gained posthumous fame as a result of her tragic death and her haunting uncompleted composition 'The Dream of Olwen'. Her reclusive sister Julia (Sonia Dresdel), who has never come to terms with Olwen's death, becomes convinced that Olwen has returned when she meets an amnesiac woman who looks like her.

The World Owes Me a Living

Eve Heathley

When a British pilot is hospitalized after a plane crash, the woman he loves sits by his bedside and remembers, in flashbacks, key episodes from their life together.