Mavis Clare Cooney (1909-76) emigrated from Australia with her family when she was eleven. Soon afterwards, Mary Pickford gave her a small role in Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921).
Villiers was in half a dozen films over the next ten years, culminating in A Lady’s Morals. She and her mother emigrated to the UK in 1933.
Villiers worked extensively on the British stage and, later, on television. She also made occasional feature films, most notably as Katherine Hepburn’s companion in Suddenly Last Summer (1959) and as one of the blackmailers in Victim (1961).
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