Born Moira Shearer King on January 17, 1926 in Dunfermline, Scotland. Her father, an engineer, moved the family to Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), where she was pushed into dance lessons by her mother. After the family returned to Scotland, she received lessons from the legendary Russian dance teacher Nikolai Legat. When she was just 16 she joined the Sadler's Wells Ballet and made her big national debut at 20 as Sleeping Beauty at the Royal Opera House in London.
In 1948, Powell and co-director Emeric Pressburger cast Shearer in the title role of Victoria Page, the young ballerina who sacrifices all for her career. The plot might have been a touch old fashioned, but the glorious technicolor and Robert Helpmann's florid, dazzling choreography, made this film as exciting on both sides of the Atlantic; and Shearer, complete with lucid beauty and captivating movements, a star.
After the film, Shearer returned to ballet, and following a brief U.S. tour in 1950, she made her second film, again for Powell in The Tales of Hoffmann (1951). A few more movies followed, The Story of Three Loves (1953), The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955), and a third film for Powell, the notorious Peeping Tom (1960), where she meets a grisly death at the hands of a psychotic photographer (Karl Boehm). Shearer concentrated on stage work afterwards before retiring to raise a family. She is survived by her husband of 56 years, Ludovic Kennedy; a son, Alastair; and daughters, Ailsa, Rachel, and Fiona.
by Michael T. Toole
