Nyree dawn porter biography

REX

Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes and Eric Porter as Professor Moriarty

He asked her to be his archivist and to write his biography – a request he repeated when she phoned him on his deathbed. The foremost woman in his life for 40 years until his death was a glamorous bohemian twicemarried Dutch widow 22 years his senior, Therese Megaw.

Porter proposed marriage to her in the 1960s but she gently declined, feeling a formal union would “suffocate him” . for services to television in 1971. He was so lovely with my three boys too. “He told me, ‘I care for you and I want you to look after my things.’ 

“I honestly don’t know why he asked me,” she says.

She befriended Porter when she and her husband, a scientist also called Eric, became his neighbours in London.

When the series screened again on BBC1 in 1969, an estimated 18 million people tuned in for the finale.

The show's success extended as far as the United States and New Zealand. She was cremated at Putney Vale Crematorium and her ashes buried in the cemetery there.

Filmography

Film

Television

• Man From Interpol (1960) - Mary, Signora
• Deadline Midnight (1960) - Julie Sykes
• Danger Man (1961) - Stewardess
• The Avengers (1961) - Liz Wells
• Armchair Mystery Theatre (1961–1968) - Mildred, Lisa, Barbara
• Corrigan Blake (1963) - Francesca
• Madame Bovary (1964) - Emma Bovary
• Ghost Squad (1964) - Yvette
• Judith Paris (1964) - Judith Paris
• The Indian Tales of Rudyard Kipling (1964) - Janoo
• The Saint (1964) - Patsy Butler
• Public Eye (1965) - Sheila Reynolds
• Sherlock Holmes (1965) - Lady Brackenstall
• The Liars (1966)
• The Forsyte Saga (1967) - Irene Forsyte née Heron
• Never a Cross Word (1968) - Deidre Baldock
• Jane Eyre (1970) - Blanche Ingram
• Hassan (1971)
• The House That Dripped Blood (1971) - Ann Norton
• From Beyond the Grave (1973) - Susan Warren
• Thriller (1974) - Laura
• The Protectors (1972–1974) - Contessa Caroline di Contini
• Softly, Softly (1976) - Jane Rawlings
• The Martian Chronicles (1980) - Alice Hathaway
• For Maddie With Love (1980)
• The Mind of David Berglas (1986)

References

1. ^ Date of birth given variously as either 1936 or 1940 in film reference books and obituaries.
   

   Her first professional work was touring with the New Zealand Players Trust. (Her first name was originally spelled "Ngaire," a Maori word for a small, white, star-shaped New Zealander flower.) After winning a scholarship to drama school in England, she moved there in 1960. She also toured in Australia, in Jeffrey Archer's Beyond Reasonable Doubt and later, in The King and I.

   Television

   Her film appearances include The Cracksman, Two Left Feet, Live Now - Pay Later, Jane Eyre and The Martian Chronicles among others.

   We both had a good sense of humour, we just clicked. Although the test was probably little more than a publicity stunt, she decided to stay and was soon acting in the theatre. While estimates vary, the low figures indicate it was shown in 26 countries, with over 100 million viewers. He didn’t really care for many women. Only complicating matters further, Eric Porter fell ill with appendicitis during the shoot, leaving it to Nyree to film scenes on her own, responding to questions which weren’t being asked.

   Despite the challenges of bringing the series to life, it became incredibly popular.  Although it had begun life on the struggling BBC2, it attracted six million viewers, out of the eight million who could receive the channel, effectively trebling the channel’s previous average viewership of two million.

   She was the one who best understood him.” But the actor also had a relationship with 20-something Australian artist Alexandra Alderson. She also appeared as a dotty games mistress in a Dick Emery sketch and was the subject of This is Your Life.

   She also guest-starred in an early episode of The Avengers entitled "Death on The Slipway".

   Personal life

   Her first husband, Byron O'Leary, died in 1970 after an accidental drug overdose.

   She appeared in several television productions and is probably best remembered for her roles in The Forsyte Saga and The Protectors. He was also involved with his live-in secretary Kay, “an attractive Judi Dench lookalike”.