Lilli Palmer

German actress, with numerous awards and two Golden Globe nominations to her credit. Palmer, who took her surname from an English actress she admired, was one of three daughters born to Dr. Alfred Peiser, a German Jewish surgeon, and Rose Lissman (or Lissmann), an Austrian Jewish stage actress in Posen, Prussia, Germany (now Poznań, Poland). When Lilli was four her family moved to Berlin-Charlottenburg. She was a junior table tennis champion as a young girl. She studied drama in Berlin but her recently negotiated two-year contract with the Frankfurt Playhouse was cancelled after Hitler came to power in 1933 and the family faced grave reminders due to their Jewish heritage. Her elder sister, Irene (1911–1996), became an actress known as Irene Prador, later Mrs Irene Tooth. The youngest sister, Hildegard Julie Peiser (later Mrs Ross; 1919–2008), did not, however, follow her sisters' career choices. Lilli and her sisters fled Berlin to Paris but their father died in 1934 (aged 57) in Berlin. Their mother, Rose, died in 1959 (aged 77) in England.

n France, she appeared in an operetta at the Moulin Rouge, and then to London, where she began her film career. While performing in cabarets, she attracted the attention of British talent scouts and was offered a contract by the Gaumont Film Company. She made her screen debut in Crime Unlimited (1935) and appeared in numerous British films for the next decade.

She married actor Rex Harrison on 25 January 1943, and followed him to Hollywood in 1945. She signed with Warner Brothers and appeared in several films, notably Cloak and Dagger (1946) and Body and Soul (1947). Harrison and Palmer divorced in 1956; they had one son, Carey, born in 1944.

Her second marriage, to Argentinian actor Carlos Thompson in 1958, lasted until her death.

She died of cancer in Los Angeles on 27 January 1986.