Karen Dotrice
Karen Dotrice (/doʊˈtriːs/ doh-TREESS;[1] born 9 November 1955) is a British actress. She is known primarily for her role as Jane Banks in Walt Disney's Mary Poppins, the feature film adaptation of the Mary Poppins book series. Dotrice was born in Guernsey in the Channel Islands to two stage actors. Her career began on stage, and expanded into film and television, including starring roles as a young girl whose beloved cat magically reappears in Disney's The Three Lives of Thomasina and with Thomasina co-star Matthew Garber as one of two children pining for their parents' attentions in Poppins. She appeared in five television programmes between 1972 and 1978, when she made her only feature film as an adult. Her life as an actress concluded with a short run as Desdemona in the 1981 pre-Broadway production of Othello.
Karen Dotrice
9 November 1955
Actress
1963–1984, 2005, 2020
3
- Roy Dotrice (father)
- Kay Newman (mother)
Michele Dotrice (sister)
In 1984, Dotrice retired from show business to focus on motherhood—she has three children from two marriages—though she has provided commentary for various Disney projects and has resumed making public appearances, including a cameo in Mary Poppins Returns in 2018. She was named a Disney Legend in 2004.
Early life[edit]
Born into a theatrical family, Dotrice is the daughter of Kay (née Katharine Newman) and Roy Dotrice, two Shakespearean actors who met and married while performing in repertory productions in the UK. Her father was also born in the Channel Islands.[2] She has two sisters, Michele and Yvette, both of whom are actresses. Her godfather was actor Charles Laughton,[3] who was married to Elsa Lanchester, one of the co-stars of Mary Poppins.
Her father, Roy was a Wireless Operator serving with 106 Squadron of the Royal Air Force and along with his other six crew was shot down and taken prisoner of war on the night of 2/3 May 1942.
Dotrice was a toddler when her father joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (later the Royal Shakespeare Company) in 1957. At four, she was ready to perform, making her début in an RSC production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht. There, a Disney scout saw Dotrice and brought her to Burbank, California, to meet Walt Disney.[3]
Career[edit]
Film[edit]
At age 8, Dotrice was hired in 1963 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 child who had such good manners."
Film historian Leonard Maltin said Dotrice "won over everyone" with her performance in The Three Lives of Thomasina,[3] and she was signed to play Jane Banks (along with once and future co-star Matthew Garber as her brother, Michael Banks) in Mary Poppins (1964). Disney's part-live-action, part-animation musical adaptation of the Poppins children's books by P. L. Travers starred David Tomlinson as a workaholic father and Glynis Johns as a suffragette mother who are too busy to spend much time with their children. Instead, they hire a nanny (Julie Andrews) who takes Jane and Michael on magical adventures designed to teach them—and their parents—about the importance of family. Poppins was Disney's biggest commercial success at the time[4] 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,"[5] while author Brian Sibley said, "these charming, delightful young people provided a wonderful centre for the film."[6]
Dotrice and Garber paired up a third and last time in The Gnome-Mobile (1967) as the grandchildren of a rich lumber mogul who stumble across a gnome forest and help to stop 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,[7] and Dotrice did not make another film appearance as a child.
After The Gnome-Mobile, Dotrice and Garber 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 1977 death: