Margaret Rutherford

Agatha Christie dedicated her 1963 Miss Marple novel, 'The Mirror Crack'd From Side To Side', to Rutherford "in admiration.".
Her husband, Stringer Davis, portrayed Mr. Stringer in her four Miss Marple films and appeared with her in other films as well.
She was the daughter of William Benn and Florence Nicholson. In 1883, nine years before her birth, her father murdered her grandfather. Her mother committed suicide when she was three years old and she was brought up by her aunt, Bessie Nicholson, in Wimbledon. After her aunt died, a small inheritance allowed her to join the Old Vic in repertory.
Robert Morley said in a 1967 TV interview, "Although the profession is crowded with very nice people, she's always too nice, too soft, too much the perfect auntie. She's frightfully funny. She's a marvelous woman... a good woman.".
Decided not to have children, despite having strong maternal feelings and a great love for children, out of fear that her children would contract mental illnesses, as she and her parents did. (Margaret battled depression throughout her life; her father murdered her grandfather and her mother committed suicide.).

I hope I'm an individual. I suppose an eccentric is a super individual. Perhaps an eccentric is just off centre - ex-centric. But that contradicts a belief of mine that we've got to be centrifugal.
You never have a comedian who hasn't got a very deep strain of sadness within him or her. One thing is incidental on the other. Every great clown has been very near to tragedy.
[on co-starring with Alastair Sim in The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950)] I found doing the film a bit tiresome. Film actors are, by nature, more complicated than stage actors. Mr Sim is a brilliant actor but most competitive.
[on her initial aversion to doing a Miss Marple movie] Murder, you see, is not the sort of thing I can get close to. I don't like these things that are just for thrills. I would far rather go without work. I do not like murder. It has an atmosphere I have always found uncongenial.
How I would love to have been a great traditional actress like Bernhardt, Duse, or Ellen Terry. There have been so many parts I yearned to play.