Patricia Roc

Patricia Roc (7 June 1915 – 30 December 2003), born Felicia Miriam Ursula Herold, was an English film actress, popular in the Gainsborough melodramas such as Madonna of the Seven Moons (1945) and The Wicked Lady (1945), though she only made one film in Hollywood, Canyon Passage (1946). She also appeared in Millions Like Us (1943), Jassy (1945), The Brothers (1947) and When the Bough Breaks (1947).

Early life

The adoptive daughter of a Dutch-Belgian father, André Riese, a wealthy stockbroker, and a half-French mother, she was educated at private schools in London and Paris, before joining RADA in 1937. She did not learn that she was adopted until 1949.

Film career

Roc began as a stage actress, debuting in the 1938 London production of Nuts in May, in which she was seen by Alexander Korda who cast her in a leading role as a Polish princess in The Rebel Son.

She was employed by the studio of J. Arthur Rank, who called her "the archetypal British beauty" She achieved her greatest level of popularity in British films during the Second World War in escapist melodramas for Gainsborough Studios. She played prominent roles in some patriotic films of the period, such as Let the People Sing (1941) with Alastair Sim and We'll Meet Again (1943) with Vera Lynn. She co-starred with Phyllis Calvert, Jean Kent and Flora Robson as an internment camp inmate in Two Thousand Women (1944).