1736) Michael Medwin

 Michael Hugh Medwin (1923 – 2020). English stage and film actor and film producer.

Medwin's West End theatre credits include Man and Superman, The Rivals, Love for Love, Duckers and Lovers, Alfie, St Joan of the Stockyards, and What the Butler Saw. At the National Theatre he played a season which included Weapons of Happiness, Volpone and The Madras House. He also played Lloyd Dallas in one of the casts of the long-running production of Noises Off in the early 1980s.

He is probably best known for his role as radio boss Don Satchley in the BBC television detective series Shoestring, as well as for playing Scrooge's nephew Harry in the film version of Scrooge, a musical based on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

He made many film appearances, taking a leading role as Ginger Edwards in the 1953 Guy Hamilton film The Intruder. Others included Carry On Nurse (1959) and The Longest Day (1962), before turning to producing films.

Among the films he produced for Memorial Enterprises, a company he established with actor Albert Finney, are Charlie Bubbles (1967), directed by Finney, and Lindsay Anderson's If.... (1968), which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

- "As a young actor, with red hair and wide grin, he ranged effortlessly from war drama to light comedy..." https://web.archive.org/web/20200307234906/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2020/02/27/michael-medwin-actor-familiar-face-1950s-tv-cinema-later-television/

1735) Janis Paige

Janis Paige (born Donna Mae Tjaden; 1922 –  2024). American actress and singer. With a career spanning nearly 60 years, she was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

After high school, she moved to Los Angeles, where she became a singer at the Hollywood Canteen during World War II, as well as posing as a pin-up model.

This led to a film contract with Warner Bros., although she later left the studio to pursue live theatre work, appearing in a number of Broadway shows. She continued to alternate between film and theatre work for much of her career. Beginning in the mid-1950s, she also made numerous television appearances, as well as starring in her own sitcom It's Always Jan.

- "Janis Paige, the ebullient redhead who starred in the original Broadway production of The Pajama Game..." https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/janis-paige-dead-silk-stockings-pajama-game-1235914085/

1734) Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835 – 1915). English popular novelist of the Victorian era. She is best known for her 1862 novel Lady Audley's Secret, which is considered one of the foundational examples of sensation fiction. She is known for her focus on bigamous relationships in her novels, as well as her illegitimate marriage to John Maxwell (1824–1895), a publisher of periodicals

Aside from writing, Braddon worked as an actress for eight years as a way to support herself and her mother. After establishing herself as a successful writer, she worked as a magazine editor and publisher. Braddon founded the magazine Belgravia in 1866.

- "Tall with curly auburn hair, and later described as having a very fine speaking voice, she decided upon the then shocking career of actress."  https://www.sensationpress.com/literarylives.htm 

Portrait of Mary Elizabeth Braddon by William Powell Frith, 1865

1686) Clive Revill

Clive Selsby Revill (1930 – 2025). New Zealand actor, best known for his performances in musical theatre and the London stage. A veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he also starred in numerous films and television programmes, often in character parts. He was a two-time Tony Award nominee, as Best Featured Actor in a Musical for Irma La Douce and Best Actor in a Musical for Oliver! He was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Billy Wilder's Avanti! (1972).
His roles also included voicing Emperor Palpatine in The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

 

- "Revill was stocky and pugnacious, with a Mr Punch-style nose, piercing blue eyes and red hair..." https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/apr/04/clive-revill-obituary 

 

- "Revill's red hair and distinctive Mr. Punch-like features often saw him cast as comic eccentrics in a number of British films..." https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Clive_Revill

 

1662) Patricia Laffan

Patricia Alice Laffan (1919 – 2014). English stage, film, television and radio actress and also, after her retirement from acting, an international fashion impresario.
She was the daughter of Irish-born Arthur Charles Laffan and London-born Elvira Alice Vitali.
Laffan is best known for her film roles as the Empress Poppaea in Quo Vadis (1951) and the alien Nyah in Devil Girl from Mars (1954).
She had a sizeable supporting role as Miss Alice MacDonald in 20th Century Fox's CinemaScope mystery thriller 23 Paces to Baker Street (1956). By the 1960s she appeared mainly on radio and television, including performances in Anna Karenina, The Aspern Papers, and Rembrandt, and panel game shows such as Petticoat Line and Call My Bluff. In the late 1960s and 1970s she produced and choreographed fashion shows around the world.

 

- "She was five feet, six inches tall, with dark reddish-brown hair and green eyes." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Laffan

 

1642) Alan Howard

Alan MacKenzie Howard (1937 – 2015). English actor. He was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1966 to 1983 and played leading roles at the Royal National Theatre between 1992 and 2000.
His uncle was Leslie Howard, the film star. On his mother's side he was also a great-nephew of the actress Fay Compton and the novelist Sir Compton Mackenzie.
He received three Plays and Players awards, two Evening Standard Awards for Best Actor and Society of West End Theatre award for Best Actor.
He appeared in several TV shows an TV series (such as Notorious Woman, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War) and supplied the voice of Sauron and the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

- "Six foot and with a flowing mane of red hair, Howard was perfectly suited to playing the Lancastrian kings and shone in Hands's RSC productions of Henry IV parts I and II..." https://www.thetimes.com/article/alan-howard-q0lzgbxvkcr

- "He runs a slim hand through his long red hair." http://alanhoward.org.uk/crown.htm

- "Thin, with longish, untidy red hair and heavy spectacles..." http://alanhoward.org.uk/herohamlet.htm

 

1641) Ljuba Welitsch

Ljuba Welitsch (born Veličkova; 1913 – 1996). Operatic soprano. She was born in Borisovo, Bulgaria, studied in Sofia and Vienna, and sang in opera houses in Austria and Germany in the late 1930s and early and mid-1940s. In 1946 she became an Austrian citizen.
Welitsch became best known in the title role of Richard Strauss's Salome, in which she was coached by the composer. Her international career was short, its start delayed by the Second World War and its end hastened by vocal problems. It took off in 1947 in London and continued in New York from 1949, but her starring days were over by the mid-1950s. Her international career was just before the days when complete studio recordings of operas were common, and although some live recordings survive from broadcasts, her recorded legacy is not extensive.
From the mid-1950s, Welitsch sang character roles in operas and acted in stage plays. She also featured in 21 film between 1953 and 1976.

- "Welitsch not only looked young and glamorous with her gorgeous red hair, but she sounded like a beautiful teenager..." https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-ljuba-welitsch-5601321.html

- "Welitsch’s flaming red hair, “silvery-sounding voice,” and charismatic persona..." https://www.metopera.org/discover/archives/notes-from-the-archives/from-the-archives-salome-at-the-met/

- "Known for her red hair and exuberant vivacity..." https://opera-guide.ch/highlights/show_record.php?id=76&uilang=en&iframe=true

 

1634) Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith (born Margaret Natalie Smith, 1934 – 2024). British actress known for her wit in both comedic and dramatic roles.
She had an extensive career on stage and screen for over seven decades and was one of Britain's most recognisable and prolific actresses. She received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards, four Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award, as well as nominations for six Olivier Awards. Smith is one of the few performers to earn the Triple Crown of Acting.
Smith began her stage career as a student, performing at the Oxford Playhouse in 1952, and made her professional debut on Broadway in New Faces of '56. Over the following decades she established herself alongside Judi Dench as one of the most significant British theatre performers, working for the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. On Broadway, she received Tony Award nominations for Noël Coward's Private Lives (1975) and Tom Stoppard's Night and Day (1979), and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Lettice and Lovage (1990).
Smith won Academy Awards for Best Actress for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) and Best Supporting Actress for California Suite (1978). She was Oscar-nominated for Othello (1965), Travels with My Aunt (1972), A Room with a View (1985) and Gosford Park (2001).
She married actor Robert Stephens in 1967. They had two sons, actors Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens and were divorced in 1975. Later that year Smith married playwright Alan Beverly Cross and they remained married until his death in 1998.
Smith was made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990.

- "She was very striking with that red hair, very thin, very tall." https://www.vogue.com/article/dame-maggie-smith-obituary

- "Smith was red-haired, wore braces as a kid and had a lot of freckles." https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/maggie-smith-oscar-favourite-is-a-glorious-antidote-to-the-selfabsorption-of-so-many-in-her-profession-a6734096.html

- "“Maggie Smith’s red-haired Desdemona is a beautifully vibrant, sensitive lass who accepts the realization of her doom with pathetic submissiveness.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/maggie-smith-has-died-at-89-after-iconic-career-in-harry-potter-movies-and-downton-abbey

- "A master at classical and contemporary roles who was as renowned for her subtlety as for her broad-stroke mannerisms, the red-haired Smith delighted several generations of theatergoers on both sides of the Atlantic..." https://variety.com/2024/legit/news/maggie-smith-dead-harry-potter-1236157839/

- "The girl who effects this contrast is a British actress with dark red hair, a smile that could win a war or at least make one worth losing, and “a light in her eye” https://time.com/archive/6833053/actresses-maggie-maggie/

 

1630) Gracie Fields

Dame Gracie Fields (born Grace Stansfield; 1898 – 1979). British actress, singer and comedian.

A star of cinema and music hall, she was one of the top ten film stars in Britain during the 1930s and was considered the highest paid film star in the world in 1937. Fields was known affectionately as Our Gracie and the Lancashire Lass for never losing her strong, native Lancashire accent.

She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and an Officer of the Venerable Order of St John (OStJ) in 1938, and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1979.

 

- "She was 55 years old, and her famous golden red hair was touched with gray..." https://www.nytimes.com/.../gracie-fields-is-dead-at-81...

 

 

1626) Van Heflin

Emmett Evan "Van" Heflin Jr. (1908 – 1971). American theatre, radio, and film actor. He played mostly character parts over the course of his film career, but during the 1940s had a string of roles as a leading man. Heflin won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Johnny Eager (1942). He also had memorable roles in Westerns such as Shane (1953), 3:10 to Yuma (1957), and Gunman's Walk (1958).

Heflin was the grandfather of actor Ben O'Brien and actress Eleanor O'Brien. He was also the uncle of Marta Heflin and Mady Kaplan, both actresses, and director Jonathan Kaplan. 

 

- "If you prefer your leading men to be conventionally handsome and “by-the numbers” actors, then Heflin, with his unruly red hair and restless protruding eyes, probably won’t appeal." https://filmstruck.tumblr.com/.../fall-in-love-with-van...

 

 

1617) Madeline Kahn

Madeline Gail Kahn (née Wolfson; 1942 – 1999). American actress, comedian, and singer.
She is known for comedic roles in films directed by Peter Bogdanovich and Mel Brooks, including What's Up, Doc? (1972), Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), High Anxiety (1977), History of the World, Part I (1981), and her Academy Award–nominated role in Paper Moon (1973).
Kahn made her Broadway debut in Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1968, and received Tony Award nominations for the play In the Boom Boom Room in 1974 and for the original production of the musical On the Twentieth Century in 1978. She starred as Madeline Wayne on the short-lived sitcom Oh Madeline (1983–84) and won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1987 for an ABC Afterschool Special. She received a third Tony Award nomination for the revival of the play Born Yesterday in 1989, before winning the 1993 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for the comedy The Sisters Rosensweig. Her other film appearances included The Cheap Detective (1978), City Heat (1984), Clue (1985), and Nixon (1995).
Kahn was born in Boston, the daughter of Bernard B. Wolfson, a garment manufacturer, and his wife Freda (née Goldberg). She was raised in a nonobservant Jewish family. Her parents divorced when Kahn was two, and she moved with her mother to New York City. In 1953, Freda married Hiller Kahn, who later adopted Madeline; Freda eventually changed her own name to Paula Kahn.

- "She had beautiful skin and auburn hair, high cheekbones." https://moviestvnetwork.com/lists/mel-brooks-remembers-young-frankenstein

- "She was in her early 50s at the time, her red hair was curled and styled, not long..." https://madeline-kahn-being-the-music.blogspot.com/2009/ 

- "In the school-of-Brooks comedy, The Adventure Of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975), directed and starring Gene Wilder, she was a red-haired mystery woman..." https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/dec/06/guardianobituaries2

 

 

1616) Eileen Herlie

Eileen Herlie (1918 – 2008). Scottish-American actress.
She was born Eileen Isobel Herlihy to an Irish Catholic father, Patrick Herlihy, and a Scottish Protestant mother, Isobel Cowden, in Glasgow, Scotland. She was trained as a theatre actress. Among her West End London theatre successes were The Eagle Has Two Heads by Jean Cocteau. She was married twice, to Philip Barrett (m 1942) and Witold Kuncewicz (m 1951), both marriages ending in divorce. She had no children. In 1955 she moved permanently to the United States, where she lived and worked for the last fifty-three years of her life.
In 1942 she moved to England to work as a professional actress. Her first role in the London theatre in 1942 was as the second Mrs de Winter in Daphne du Maurier's stage adaptation of her own novel Rebecca.
In 1951 she made her first television appearance in the leading role of Regina in a BBC TV adaptation of Lillian Hellman's stage play The Little Foxes.
Herlie's first big film break was being cast by Laurence Olivier in his screen adaptation of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, shot in 1947. She played Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, for the second time. On this occasion, at 29, she was eleven years younger than her 40-year-old stage son (Olivier).
Herlie's other American film appearances in the 1960s were roles in Freud: The Secret Passion (1962), and The Sea Gull (1968), the first major film version in English of Anton Chekhov's celebrated play. (The second was her last feature film.)
In 1955, Herlie made her Broadway debut as Irene Molloy in The Matchmaker (which was later made into the musical Hello, Dolly!). In 1960, she was nominated for a Tony Award as 'Best Actress in a Musical' for Take Me Along, an adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!
In May 1976, Herlie made the move to television soap operas in the role of Myrtle Fargate on All My Children, playing the role for virtually the rest of her life. In the 1980s, Herlie was nominated for three consecutive Daytime Emmy Awards (1984, 1985 and 1986). 

- ”I’m sure Eileen is lighting up the skies in heaven with her flaming red hair and lovely Scottish accent,” says Lucci, who’s also currently a contestant on Dancing With the Stars." https://ew.com/.../soap-watch-amc-stars-remember-eileen.../

 
- "The feisty, flaming red-haired Scot took her first Broadway bow in 1955..." https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0379047/

 

1611) Caroline Miskel Hoyt

Caroline Miskel Hoyt (née Scales; 1873–1898). American stage actress.
She moved to New York City at the age of 18 and soon made her professional stage début touring with Augustin Daly's famed repertory company, adopting the professional name Caroline Miskel. The following season she portrayed Ruth Hardman in Charles H. Hoyt's A Temperance Town, a satiric comedy that opened in 1893, at Hoyt's Madison Square Theatre.
Though by then Miskel was known as a promising young actress with a flair for comedy, she chose to retire from the stage not long after she married Charles Hoyt in 1894. She returned to the theatre in 1897 to star in Hoyt's new play A Contented Woman.
In 1898 she became gravely ill following the birth of her son and both died the next day. The loss brought about the decline of her widower, who died two years later. 

- "Canadian writer Hector Willoughby Charlesworth described her “light auburn hair, creamy complexion, bright sapphire eyes, and noble form and features” and noted that she was “as intellectual as she was beautiful.” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/scales_caroline_12E.html

 

1610) Agnes Ethel

Agnes Ethel (1846 – 1903). American Broadway actress of the late 19th century.
She made her stage debut in Camille (1868), at Jerome's private theatre in New York. She was in the first production of Frou Frou in the United States. The Augustin Daly stock company staged it at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, in 1870. Ethel appeared in Fernande, also at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, again in 1870. A critic wrote that her acting was her best thus far. In September 1872 Ethel appeared in Agnes, presented by the Union Square Theatre. The play was written especially for her by Victorien Sardou. It ran for one hundred nights.
In 1873 Ethel married Francis W. Tracy, a millionaire, and retired from the stage. She took part in charities and assisted struggling actors and actresses. She performed only twice more on stage, appearing on both occasions in support of charity.
When Tracy died in 1886, she was involved in a dispute about his will with Tracy's first wife, but eventually Ethel was awarded the entire fortune.

- "Daly’s biographer described Ethel as “a slender figure, candid eyes, flowing auburn hair, an oval face..." https://cabinetcardgallery.com/2009/02/09/agnes-ethel-broadway-stage-actress/

 

1609) William Lucking

William Lucking (1941 – 2021). American film, television, and stage actor, best known for his role as Piney Winston in Sons of Anarchy (2008–2011), and for his movie roles in The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972), and The Rundown (2003). He was also known for his portrayal of Col. Lynch in the first season of the 1980s TV show The A-Team.
Lucking graduated from UCLA and the Pasadena Playhouse with degrees in literature and theater. In 1986, with fellow actor and Michigan native Dana Elcar, he co-founded the Santa Paula Theater Center.

- "Stocky, rough-hewn, red-haired actor often seen in biker and hippie films of the late 1960s and early 1970s."  https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0524747/trivia/

- "Besides motorcycle club members, the big & burly Lucking, with his rough-hewn face and red hair, played a slew of sheriffs, detectives, patrolmen..." https://cscottrollins.blogspot.com/2021/11/rest-in-peace-william-lucking-big-bill.html

 

1608) Dorothy Gish

Dorothy Elizabeth Gish (1898 – 1968). American actress of the screen and stage, as well as a director and writer. Dorothy and her older sister Lillian Gish were major movie stars of the silent era. Dorothy Gish was noted as a fine comedian, and many of her films were comedies.
In 1912, their childhood friend, actress Mary Pickford, introduced the sisters to director D. W. Griffith, and they began performing as extras at the Biograph Studios in New York. Dorothy and her sister debuted in Griffith's 1912 production An Unseen Enemy. She would ultimately perform in over 100 short films and features, many times with Lillian.
From 1930 (the beginning of talking pictures) until her death, she only performed in five more movies. Her final film role was in 1963 in the Otto Preminger production, The Cardinal, in which she plays the mother of the title character.
Television in the 1950s, however, offered many stage and film actors the opportunity to perform in plays broadcast live. Dorothy ventured into the new medium, appearing on NBC's Lux Video Theatre on the evening of November 24, 1955, in a production of Miss Susie Slagle's.
In 1920, Dorothy Gish married James Malachi Rennie (1890–1965), a Canadian-born actor who co-starred with her in two productions in that same year. Gish and Rennie remained together until their divorce in 1935. Dorothy never married again.

- "Lillian, a fair, sedate little lass, was delighted when Dorothy arrived—fat, rosy, red-haired—full of fun and mischief, almost from the beginning... Ruddy-haired Dorothy was lovelier than any doll." https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/55169/pg55169-images.html

 

1604) Stuart Holmes

Stuart Holmes (born Joseph Liebchen; 1884 – 1971). American actor and sculptor whose career spanned seven decades. He appeared in almost 450 films between 1909 and 1964, sometimes credited as Stewart Holmes.
For 20 years, Holmes performed in vaudeville and on stage, with the latter often being in Shakespeare's plays. His work in the theater included a stint in Germany.
Holmes's film career began in 1911 and ended with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).
As a sculptor, Holmes created work for at least three California United States post offices — in Oceanside (1936), Claremont (1937), and Bell (1937).

- "Stuart Holmes, whose sardonic smile and auburn hair are looked upon as the last word in aids to screen villainy..." https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stuart_Holmes_Stars_of_the_Photoplay.jpg

- "... auburn hair and hazel eyes..."  https://archive.org/stream/motionpicturealm1929exhi/motionpicturealm1929exhi_djvu.txt

 

1601) Marc McDermott

Marcus McDermott (also credited as Marc MacDermott; 1871 – 1929). Australian actor who starred on Broadway and in over 180 American films from 1909 until his death.
He was born in Goulburn, New South Wales to Irish parents.
In 1899 he was discovered by illustrious stage actor George Rignold and in mid-1902 he traveled to New York via Canada, joining Mrs Patrick Campbell’s a company soon after and appearing on Broadway, as Sir George Orreyed in The Second Mrs. Tanqeray. In mid-1903 he traveled to England with Campbell and performed there until 1906 when he returned to the United States, his reputation by now well established.

In 1909 he was hired by Thomas Edison  to appear as a featured player at Edison's Bronx studio. In 1912, he starred with Mary Fuller and Charles Ogle in What Happened to Mary?, the first motion picture serial made in the U.S.
McDermott had starred in over 140 films for Edison by 1916, and had frequently appeared in popular film magazines like Photoplay and Moving Picture World. That year, he married stage actress Miriam Nesbitt, who later co-starred with him in many films such as The Man Who Disappeared. McDermott then left Edison Studios to join Vitagraph Studios.

- "Tall with thick auburn hair and dark brown eyes, Marc cut an impressive figure." https://www.amazon.com/prime-video/actor/Marc-McDermott/amzn1.dv.gti.d5fd0110-bedd-46eb-a3bf-f4b2d75b377d/

 

1600) Irene Fenwick

Irene Fenwick (born Irene Frizell; 1887 – 1936). American stage and silent film actress. She was married to Lionel Barrymore from 1923 until her death in 1936. Years before marrying Lionel, Irene had dated Lionel's brother, John.
In New York she met Broadway producer Charles Frohman who gave her the stage name Fenwick and the ingénue role in The Brass Bottle (1910). She continued on stage in 1912 opposite Douglas Fairbanks in Hawthorne of the U.S.A.
While on Broadway, she started working in silent films with producer George Kleine. Fenwick often played wronged women and vamps in films such as The Sentimental Lady (1915), The Woman Next Door (1915), A Coney Island Princess (1916).
Fenwick felt restricted by these film roles and returned to the stage. In the hit plays The Claw (1921) and Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1923) she co-starred with Lionel Barrymore, whom she married in 1923, after a brief engagement. She retired in 1926 after her husband chose a Hollywood career.
She died from complications of anorexia nervosa (called "overdieting" then). 

- "A vivacious redhead, adept at both drama and comedy, she had a forceful stage presence that belied her tiny stature of 4'11"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Fenwick

- "The petite redhead was nicknamed "The Pocket Venus"."  https://www.classicactresses.org/2021/01/irenefenwick.html

 

1599) Valerie Hobson

Valerie Hobson (born Babette Louisa Valerie Hobson, 1917 –1998). British actress whose film career spanned the 1930s to the early 1950s.
She was born in County Antrim, in Ulster. Before she was 11 years old, Hobson had begun to study acting and dancing at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.
In 1935, aged 17, she appeared as Baroness Frankenstein in Bride of Frankenstein with Boris Karloff and Colin Clive. She played opposite Henry Hull that same year in Werewolf of London, the first Hollywood werewolf film. The latter half of the 1940s saw Hobson in perhaps her two most memorable roles: as the adult Estella in David Lean's adaptation of Great Expectations (1946), and as the refined and virtuous Edith D'Ascoyne in the black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949).
Hobson's last starring role was in the original London production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical play The King and I, which opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on 8 October 1953. She played Mrs. Anna Leonowens opposite Herbert Lom's King. The show ran for 926 performances.
In 1939, Hobson married film producer Anthony Havelock-Allan. They had two sons, Anthony and Mark. In 1952 they divorced and in 1954 Hobson married   Brigadier John Profumo, a Member of Parliament, giving up acting shortly afterwards. After Profumo's ministerial career ended in disgrace in 1963, following revelations he had lied to the House of Commons about his affair with Christine Keeler, Hobson stood by him, and they worked together for charity for the remainder of her life. Their son, author David Profumo, wrote about the scandal in Bringing the House Down: A Family Memoir (2006).

- "A great beauty who became an impressive actress, elegant redheaded Valerie Hobson landed some very choice roles in the later 1940s..." http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/486555/index.html 

- "She was an attractive lady with auburn hair, worn loose and quite curly for that time, and lovely skin." https://www.theoldie.co.uk/blog/i-once-met-valerie-hobson-by-annette-page

- "Although beautiful, with long auburn hair, she was upper-crust and aloof and seemed too prim and ladylike to appear opposite matinée idols such as Granger and Gérard Philippe." https://liambluett.com/2010/valerie-hobson/