A statuesque and striking actress with vaguely reptilian aspects, at once sinister and alluring; a smile never more than a whisker away from a sneer and a commanding, imperious presence suggesting innate superiority. Difficult to cast, Patricia Laffan seemed destined to portray the villainous or the eccentric. The daughter of Irish rubber planter Arthur Charles Laffan . Subsequent TV appearances saw her mostly confined to conventional aristocratic ladies in period or crime dramas. Patricia Laffan retired from the screen in 1965, apparently to a quiet life in Chelsea, London, where she may have pursued her passions for fast cars, story-writing and breeding bull terriers.
A clip showing her firing a ray gun in Devil Girl from Mars is often used in commercials and documentaries, such as the TV remote episode of the History Channel series "Historys Lost and Found" (early remotes used a beam of light and looked like a ray gun).
The producer and director of MGMs "Quo Vadis" selected her for the part of Neros wife Poppaea after theyd seen a test she had made for a less important part in the film.
She said that had she not become an actress she would probably have been a writer. She had a number of short stories published. When she was in France in 1946 she wrote scripts for the Paris radio - she spoke French fluently.
In 1954 she listed her Poppaea-like pastimes as fast cars and breeding bull terriers.
She passed away 9 days shy of her 95th birthday. Her death was not announced publicly at the time and was only made public when a researcher uncovered her death certificate 2 and a half years later and published it online.
