Lila Kaye

{{Short description|English actress (1929–2012)}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2024}}

{{Use British English|date=March 2024}}

{{more citations needed|date=March 2013}}

{{Infobox person

|name= Lila Kaye

|image= Lila Kaye 1984.jpg

|caption=Kaye in Mama Malone in 1984

|birth_name=

|birth_date= {{birth date|df=y|1929|11|07}}

|birth_place=

|death_date = {{death date and age|df=y|2012|1|10|1929|11|07}}

|death_place = Worthing, Sussex, England

|occupation= Actress

|children = 1

}}

Lila Kaye (7 November 1929 – 10 January 2012) was an English actress. She spent a number of years working in the United States, on Broadway and in television, before returning to England.

She often played motherly and/or comedic characters, mostly on television, including Cathy Come Home (1966) as a staff member at a homeless shelter, and My Son Reuben (1975), co-starring Bernard Spear, as a Jewish mother and her bachelor son who jointly run a dry-cleaning business. She also appeared in films including Blind Terror (1971), The Black Panther (1977) and Quincy's Quest (1979), and found film success in later years for her performances in An American Werewolf in London (1981) as the conflicted rural barmaid trying to warn off the two doomed American backpackers, in Nuns on the Run (1990) as a formidable nun, and in Reason for Living: The Jill Ireland Story (1991; an American television film), in which she played Dorothy Ireland, the real-life mother of cancer-stricken actress Jill Ireland (played by Jill Clayburgh).{{Cite web|url=https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2ba171bd44|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160602000202/http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2ba171bd44|url-status=dead|archive-date=2 June 2016|title = Lila Kaye|accessdate=25 January 2023}} Kaye appeared in Bert Rigby, You're a Fool (1989) as Mrs. Pennington, and in Dragonworld (1994) as Mrs. Cosgrove.

In 1991, Lila played headmistress Mrs. Daphne Trout in series two and the first half of series three of the children's BBC television series Bodger & Badger.{{Cite news|url=http://homeoftvnostalgia.wixsite.com/homepage6/bodger-and-badger|title=Retro TV|access-date=17 July 2017}}

She appeared as a nurse in a notable Royal Shakespeare Company production of John Vanbrugh's play, The Relapse, at the Aldwych Theatre in London in 1967, alongside, among others, Donald Sinden, Patrick Stewart and Ben Kingsley. She debuted the role of Serafima Ilinitchna in Nikolai Erdman's The Suicide (1979). She was part of the cast of the Royal Shakespeare Company's epic stage production of Nicholas Nickleby on Broadway in 1981.{{Cite web|url=https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/lila-kaye-91133|title = Lila Kaye – Broadway Cast & Staff | IBDB|accessdate=25 January 2023}}

Kaye starred in the title role of the short-lived U.S. television series Mama Malone a year later. She made guest appearances on several U.S. television series, such as Murder, She Wrote, Cheers and Dear John (reuniting her with An American Werewolf In London co-star Jenny Agutter). She resided in Florida before returning to Britain. Her last role was in the British television serial Julia Jekyll and Harriet Hyde in 1998, in which she appeared as "Granny Jekyll". After this role she announced her retirement.{{cite book|title=Punch|url=https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Lila+Kaye|accessdate=8 June 2011|year=1967|publisher=Punch Publications Ltd.|page=325}}