Selma Vaz Dias

Selma Vaz Dias was a British actress, writer and painter who moved from her native Amsterdam to the United Kingdom and spent most of her career there. On screen she worked for major British directors, appearing in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942) and Ernest Morris's The Tell-Tale Heart (1960). Her stage work centered on the plays of Jean Genet: she played Solange in the two British premieres of The Maids, directed by Peter Zadek in 1952 and 1956, and took the lead role of Irma in the world premiere of The Balcony at the Arts Theatre Club in 1957, also directed by Zadek. She adapted Jean Rhys's novel Good Morning, Midnight for the theater in 1949, and her radio version was broadcast by the BBC in 1957; Rhys credited her with reawakening her literary inclinations.