Actors - Karen Dotrice

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	Actors - Karen Dotrice

Karen Dotrice (born 9 November 1955) is an English actress known primarily for her role as a child in Walt Disney's feature film adaptation of the Mary Poppins book series. Dotrice (dō-'trēs) was born in Guernsey, Channel Islands, UK, to two accomplished stage actors. Her career began on stage, expanded into film and television roles, and concluded with a short run as Desdemona in the Broadway production of Othello. In 1984, Dotrice retired from show business to focus on motherhood; she has three children from two marriages.

Early life

Born into an acting family, Karen Dotrice is the daughter of Roy and Kay Dotrice, two Shakespearean actors who met and married while performing in repertory theatre productions in England. She has two sisters, Michele and Yvette, both of whom are actresses. Her godfather was actor Charles Laughton.

Dotrice was a toddler when her father joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (later the Royal Shakespeare Company) in 1957. By age four, she was ready to perform, making her début in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertold Brecht. There, a Disney scout saw Dotrice and brought her to Burbank, California, United States, to meet Walt Disney.

Film

At age eight, Dotrice was hired in 1964 to appear in The Three Lives of Thomasina
as a girl whose relationship with her father is mended by the magical reappearance of her cat. While Dotrice was in California, her father stayed in England—where he was portraying King Lear—and Walt Disney personally took care of her family, often hosting them in his Palm Springs home. Dotrice took quickly to Disney as a father figure, calling him "Uncle Walt". She said the admiration was mutual: "I think he really liked English kids. He was tickled pink by the accent and the etiquette. And when I was being very English and polite, he would look proudly at this little charge who had such good manners." and won five Academy Awards, making its stars world-famous. Dotrice and Garber were praised for their natural screen presence; critic Bosley Crowther wrote, "the kids ... are just as they should be," while author Brian Sibley said, "these charming, delightful young people provided a wonderful center for the film."

Dotrice and Garber paired up again in The Gnome-Mobile
(1967) as the grandchildren of a rich lumber mogul who stumble across a gnome forest and help keep the gnomes from dying off. Starring Walter Brennan in a dual role, The Gnome-Mobile failed to perform on a par with Poppins at the box office, and Dotrice did not make another film appearance as a child.

After The Gnome-Mobile, "the kids" no longer kept in contact with each other. In an interview for the 40th Anniversary Edition DVD release of Mary Poppins, Dotrice recalled how she learned of Garber's death (in 1977): "I remember his mum, Margot, calling ... to let us know that Matthew had died. That was— so unexpected. ... I wished I had picked up the phone over the years, I wished I had treated him more like a brother; but he's indelibly printed in all of our minds, he's eternal ... an amazing little soul."

Dotrice later appeared as Alex Mackenzie in The Thirty-Nine Steps
(1978) with Robert Powell and John Mills (Hayley's father). The second remake of the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock classic (based on the John Buchan novel) was her only feature film as an adult. According to All Movie Guide, Dotrice played "an imperiled heroine was an invention of the Hitchcock version; the Buchan story is essentially 'boys only'."

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