Moira Shearer

Trained as a dancer from age six, Scottish ballerina Moira Shearer was invited to join the Sadler's Wells ballet troupe at 16. In 1948, she was selected from hundreds of applicants to star in the Powell-Pressburger Technicolor production The Red Shoes. As Vicki Page, the single-purposed ballerina whose dedication to her art eventually brings about her death, Shearer influenced thousands of impressionable young girls to pursue ballet careers--hopefully with happier results! Most of her follow-up films cast her as a dancer, with such diverting exceptions as The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955), in which she portrayed several women in leading man John Justin's life, and the controversial Peeping Tom (1960), where, under the direction of her Red Shoes mentor Michael Powell, Shearer played an aspiring actress who is murdered by voyeuristic photographer Karl Boehm. Moira Shearer retired from show business upon marrying Ludovic Kennedy, making a most welcome comeback on stage in 1974. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide