Marie De Becker

Marie Kathleen De Becker (13 June 1880 – 23 March 1946) was an English-American actress who worked in both stage and film. Born in Islington, London, she was the daughter of Benevenuto Nicola de Becker, a shipping clerk, and his wife Catherine Elizabeth de Becker, née Kerin. The performing arts ran in the family: her sister Ernestine, known as Nesta, was an actress and the mother of actress Ernestine Barrier, and her brother Harold also pursued an acting career.

De Becker's earliest stage work took place while her family resided in Camberwell, South London. At nineteen, she took the role of Joyce in a 1899 production of East Lynne, staged by J. Pitt Hardacre's Company at the Theatre Metropole in Camberwell, with her younger brother Harold appearing in the juvenile role of Little Willie. The following year she appeared in multiple provincial productions across England and Scotland of a stage adaptation of John Strange Winter's novel Bootle's Baby, playing the character Humpty Dumpty, identified as the Nurse, while her sister Nesta played Mignon. In 1902, she appeared as Jane in Uncles and Aunts at venues in Dover, Coventry, and Cardiff.

Her Broadway career spanned nearly four decades, from 1901 to 1938. Among her stage credits were The Madras House, Love on the Dole, And Now Good-bye, If I Were You, and Bright Rebel. De Becker became particularly recognized for playing mature character parts, a specialty that carried into her film work in the 1940s. She appeared in the films Mrs. Miniver, Random Harvest, and Devotion, productions for which she was notably remembered.