Sonia Dresdel (5 May 1909 – 18 January 1976) was an English actress, whose career ran between the 1940s and 1970s.
Life
She was born Lois Obee in Hornsea, East Riding of Yorkshire, England, and was educated at Aberdeen High School for Girls and RADA.
Career
Her performance in the lead role of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler at the Westminster Theatre in 1942 "was legendary. It was the performance on which her reputation was founded. James Agate was ecstatic..." For a decade Dresdel was regarded as one of England's foremost stage actresses. Her leading role in the 1947 film While I Live also gained her a great deal of acclaim. In the film she plays Julia Trevelyan, a spinster living in a lonely cliff top house in Cornwall and haunted by the death of her sister 25 years earlier.
Her best remembered role is as Mrs. Baines in the film version of Graham Greene's The Fallen Idol (1948), which starred Ralph Richardson, Michèle Morgan and Bobby Henrey. The film received Academy Awards nominations for Best Director (Sir Carol Reed) and Best Screenplay.
In the 1950s, as well as appearing increasingly on television, Dresdel moved more to the management side of things, becoming a theatre director under the aegis of the New White Rose Players, directing plays including the thriller Night of the Shoot.
- George and the Dragon (1967–1968, TV Series) as Priscilla
- The Break (1962) as Sarah
- Jane Eyre (1963, TV series) as Mrs. Reed
- Public Eye (1968, TV Series) as Mrs. Briggs
- Dixon of Dock Green (1968) as Mrs. Dewar
- The Caesars (1968) as Livia
- Last of the Long-haired Boys (1968) as Miss Dearborn
- Bachelor Father (1970–1971, TV Series) as Mother
- Paul Temple (1971, TV Series) as Agnes Armadyne
- Wives and Daughters (1971, TV Mini-Series) as Lady Cumnor
- The Strauss Family (1972, TV Mini-Series) as Lucari
- Lady Caroline Lamb (1972) as Lady Pont
- The Onedin Line (1972, TV Series) as Lady Lazenby
- Lizzie Dripping (1973–1975, TV Series) as The Witch
- The Pallisers (1974, TV Mini-Series) as the Marchioness of Auld Reekie