Cathryn Harrison

Acting

Cathryn Harrison

Born 1959-05-25 · Marylebone, London, England, UK

​Cathryn Mary Lee Harrison (25 May 1959 – October 2018) was an English actress. Cathryn was baptised on 27 September 1959 at St.John's Church,Hampstead,London,England. She is the daughter of the actor and singer Noel Harrison and Sara Lee Eberts and also the grand daughter of legendary actor Sir Rex Harrison.Her brother Simon Harrison is also an actor as well as her sister Harriet Harrison. She has a brother Will and a sister Chloe from her father's second marriage, and an older sister Zoe from her mother's first marriage to Carleton John Richard Tufnell. In May 1996 she married Paul Laing the son of Ronald David Laing and uses that name since then. Her most notable performances include Lily in Black Moon as well as many made-for-television movies including Portrait of a Marriage where she plays Violet Trefusis, Vita Sackville West's lesbian lover. She began her career in Robert Altman's Images and after two decades of low roles, started a career in British television and radio dramas. She appeared in Love on a Branch Line and an 1977 Australian film called Blue Fire Lady. She also appeared as Major Tom Cadman's wife in the ITV series Soldier Soldier, and played wardrobe assistant Irenie in the film version of Ronald Harwood's The Dresser. She died in 2018.

Acting credits

A Christmas Carol poster
7.5

Miser Ebenezer Scrooge is awakened on Christmas Eve by spirits who reveal to him his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways. Scrooge is faced with his own story of growing bitterness and meanness, and must decide what his own future will hold: death or redemption.

A Christmas Carol

1984

Black Moon poster
6.0

There is a global gender war between men and women. A teenage girl tries to escape this reality and arrives at a hidden place where a strange unicorn lives with a family: sister, brother, many children and an old, bedridden woman who stays in contact with the world through her radio.

Black Moon

1975

A Handful of Dust poster
6.1

English aristocrat Tony Last welcomes tragedy into his life when he invites John Beaver to visit his vast estate. There Beaver makes the acquaintance of Tony's wife, Brenda. Together, they continue their relationship in a series of bedroom assignations in London. Trusting to a fault, Tony is unaware that anything is amiss until his wife suddenly asks for a divorce. With his life in turmoil, Tony goes on a haphazard journey to South America.

A Handful of Dust

1988

The Dresser poster
6.8

In a touring Shakespearean theater group, a backstage hand - the dresser - is devoted to the brilliant but tyrannical head of the company. He struggles to support the deteriorating star as the company struggles to carry on during the London Blitz. The pathos of his backstage efforts rival the pathos in the story of Lear and the Fool that is being presented on-stage, as the situation comes to a crisis.

The Dresser

1983

Images poster
6.8

While holidaying in Ireland, a pregnant children's author finds her mental state becoming increasingly unstable, resulting in paranoia, hallucinations, and visions of a doppelgänger.

Images

1972

Eat the Rich poster
6.2

Alex is a disgruntled waiter at a snobby exclusive restaurant who falls on hard times. Forced to deal with the contempt and disgust of the upper class, Alex & cohorts attempt to go on a rampage. Meanwhile, General Karprov and Spider plot to involve the inept anarchists into their plans to derail the prime-minister-to-be's campaign.

Eat the Rich

1987

The Pied Piper poster
5.9

Greed, corruption, ignorance, and disease. Midsummer, 1349: the Black Death reaches northern Germany. Minstrels go to Hamelin for the Mayor's daughter's wedding to the Baron's son. He wants her dowry to pay his army while his father taxes the people to build a cathedral he thinks will save his soul. A local apothecary who's a Jew seeks a treatment for the plague; the priests charge him with witchcraft. One of the minstrels, who has soothed the Mayor's daughter with his music, promises to rid the town of rats for the fee. The Mayor agrees, then renigs. In the morning, the plague, the Jew's trial, and the Piper's revenge come at once.

The Pied Piper

1972

Duet for One poster
5.4

When Stephanie, a famous violinist, contracts multiple sclerosis her life begins to fall apart. Her career ends, her husband leaves her for another woman and her favorite pupil leave the country. Unable to bear all this loss, Stephanie attempts suicide.

Duet for One

1986

The Happy Valley poster
6.1

In 1940 Kenya as their country prepares for war, the local aristocratic social set lives a decadent, self-indulgent lifestyle, that leads to murder. The same events were also dramatised in the feature film White Mischief, which was released seven months after the first transmission of The Happy Valley.

The Happy Valley

1987

Empire State poster
5.1

In the docklands of East London stands the Empire State, a nightclub full of magic and mystery. Designed like an ocean liner, it's become a battle ground where anything can happen. In the midst of the action, a young boy stows aboard to search for his friend who has disappeared in the entrails of the club.

Empire State

1987

Blue Fire Lady poster
6.8

Jenny Grey a horse loving country girl leaves her widowed father to move to the city after her father's frustrations towards Jenny and her desires to ride horses, after her mother had died from a horse-riding accident. Jenny finds work at a country race track and becomes obsessed with a troublesome horse called "Blue Fire Lady". "Blue Fire Lady" shows promise in Jenny's hands, but around everyone else misbehaves and shows no discipline. When "Blue Fire Lady" is put up for auction it is up to Jenny to either buy her or prove her.

Blue Fire Lady

1977

Liza poster
NR

Lavretsky returns to Russia from Europe and joins the group of admirers of his beautiful young cousin Liza.

Liza

1978

The Witches of Pendle poster
5.5

A BBC dramatization of the Pendle witch trials of Lancashire, England that occurred in 1616.

The Witches of Pendle

1976

The Telephone poster
NR

A young woman enacts an imaginative revenge on her boyfriend for playing away. Director Chris Petit made this three-minute short to test a new super 16mm Kodak film stock to be used on Peter Greenaway’s upcoming feature The Draughtsman’s Contract.

The Telephone

1981