Dorothy Alison

Australian-born supporting actress who spent much of her career in Great Britain, playing warm, approachable characters in films from "Reach for the Sky" (1956) to "The Nun's Story" (1959) to "Georgy Girl" (1966) to "Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde" (1971). Alison's most fondly remembered film performance may be her first, as the sympathetic teacher of the hearing-impaired who finally gets a young girl to utter sounds in Alexander Mackendrick's "Mandy" (1952). The renaissance in Australian filmmaking during the 1970s and 80s enabled Alison to act more in her native land, where she appeared in "A Cry in the Dark" (1988) and "Malpractice" (1989) and the TV miniseries "A Town Like Alice" (1981).