Born Joan Boniface Winnifrith, the daughter of a clergyman, Anna Lee
ran away from home at the age of fourteen to join a circus. She studied
drama at the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art and
gained brief stage experience before she began appearing in British
“quota quickies” in 1932. First as an extra, then playing
supporting roles and leads she was signed to Gaumont-British in 1935.
Her first film for G-B was the morality tale The
Passing of the Third Floor Back (1935), in which she was one of
the more sympathetic tenants in a London boarding house.
She married director Robert Stevenson
in 1933 and played standard leading lady roles in several of his films,
including The
Man Who Changed His Mind (1936) and King
Solomon's Mines (1937). In 1940, director Lewis Milestone was looking
for an actress to co-star in My Life with Caroline (1941) and had been
impressed by Lee’s performance in the comedy Young
Man’s Fancy (1939). She subsequently moved to Hollywood with
Stevenson and began making films there. In 1981 a car accident left
her paralysed from the waist down, yet continued performing in a wheelchair.
She was awarded an M.B.E. in 1982 after raising money to preserve the
White Cliffs at Dover and Ightham Mote.
