Vera Day

Vera Day is an English film and television actress who was born in London and grew up in Forest Gate, Essex. She left school at 15, worked a series of jobs, and became a full-time model before answering an advertisement for showgirls. Though untrained in singing and dancing, she was noticed by Jack Hylton, who cast her in Wish You Were Here, a London Casino show, in 1953, and a note from Val Guest at the stage door then led to her being cast in Dance Little Lady. From the late 1950s she was a glamorous blonde presence in British films, among them Stanley Baker's drama Hell Drivers (1957), Hammer's science fiction film Quatermass 2 (1957) and the comedy Too Many Crooks (1959). She took one of her few leading parts as the heroine of the horror film Womaneater (1958), and much later she had a supporting part in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998).