- She was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1975 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to drama.
- Favorite actress of playwright Sir J.M. Barrie. He wrote the play, "Mary Rose", especially for her.
- Had her own drama school, Fay Compton's Studio of Dramatic Art; one of the pupils was Alec Guinness.
- Daughter of stage actors Edward Compton (d. 1918) and Virginia Bateman (d. 1940).
- Grandmother of the actress Tracy Reed and Joe Pelissier.
- On April 2, 1988, her only child Anthony Pelissier died at the age of 75.
- She played Queen Victoria in both Le premier ministre (1941) and Poor Butterfly (1969).
- Ex-sister-in-law of Charles Quatermaine.
- Versatile British leading actress, on the London stage from 1916. Accclaimed for her performances as "Ophelia" in "Hamlet" (1925, opposite John Barrymore), "Autumn Crocus" (1931) and (as "Ruth") in "Blithe Spirit" (1941). Acted in silent films during the 20s. In her later career, worked as a radio actress and appeared in character roles on screen, notably as "Emilia" in Orson Welles' Othello (1951) and as the grandmother in La vierge et le gitan (1970). From the 1960s played many an indomitable dowager on British television.
- Gave birth to her only child at age 17, a son Harry Anthony Compton Pelissier (aka Anthony Pelissier) on July 27, 1912. Child's father was her first husband.
- She had two roles in common with Anna Neagle: (1) Neagle played Queen Victoria in La reine Victoria (1937) and Soixante années de gloire (1938) while Compton played her in Le premier ministre (1941) and Poor Butterfly (1969) and (2) Compton played Florence Nightingale in Wedding Group (1936) while Neagle played her in The Lady with a Lamp (1951).
- Her father was a solicitor in Bury St Edmonds, she was educated in Sherrbourne Public School with the intention of her joining the family firm but half way through her exams she left to join an acting school run by an actress.
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