British actress Anna Massey has died of cancer at the age of 73, The Guardian is reporting. A veteran of stage, film, and television, Massey’s career stretched from the 1955, when she made her theatrical debut in The Reluctant Debutante, to recent years, when she worked extensively in British television. The daughter of Adrianne Allen and Raymond Massey, Massey had no formal training but quickly established herself as a capable presence in light comedies and serious dramas on stage. Filmgoers came to know her first in the 1960s, where her notable roles included a turn as a too-trusting woman in Michael Powell’s remarkable, career-destroying thriller Peeping Tom, a role in Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake Is Missing, and an appearance as a victim in Alfred Hitchcock’s nastily effective late-career Frenzy. More recently, Massey appeared in the 2002 version of The Importance Of Being Earnest and the A.S. Byatt-adaptation Possession.
Her pedigree—in addition to her parents, she counted John Ford as her godfather—seemingly marked Massey as born to act. But so did her remarkably expressive eyes. For evidence, look no further than the Peeping Tom trailer.