Eunice Gayson

Gayson and her twin sister Patricia were born in 1928 in Croydon to John and Maria Sargaison (née Gammon). Her father was a civil servant. The family lived in Streatham, London and moved to Purley, Surrey and later Glasgow, before settling in Edinburgh. There she attended the Edinburgh Academy and studied operatic singing.^[2]

Gayson played a major role in the Hammer horror film The Revenge of Frankenstein and appeared on television in series such as The Saint (which starred a future James Bond, Roger Moore) and The Avengers.^[3] She played the Baroness Elsa Schraeder in the 1962 London stage production of The Sound of Music, during which time she also filmed scenes for the first two Bond films, Dr. No (1962) and From Russia with Love (1963).^[4] She remained a regular in London theatre, appearing in, among other productions, the comedy The Grass Is Greener (1971). In the early 1990s, Gayson appeared in Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods in the role of the grandmother.^[2]

Gayson married the writer Leigh Vance in 1953, a marriage that was featured on the American daytime television series Bride and Groom. They divorced in 1959, and in 1968 she married the film and stage actor Brian Jackson. She and Jackson had a daughter before divorcing after ten years of marriage. Their daughter Kate later appeared in the casino scene in the 1995 Bond film GoldenEye.^[7] Gayson died on 8 June 2018, aged 90.^[2]