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

An American Werewolf in London

as Barmaid

Cheers

as Lillian Huxley

Murder, She Wrote

as Teresa Mancini

Sherlock Holmes

as Mrs. Mordecai Smith

Nuns on the Run

as Sister Mary of the Annunciation

See No Evil

as Gypsy Mother

The Saint

as Ma

The Sign of Four

as Mrs Mordecai Smith

The Canterville Ghost

as Mrs. Umney

Dragonworld

as Mrs. Cosgrove