Pamela Franklin

Pamela Franklin plays Cathy, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a murdered psychoanalyst, in the 1964 film The Third Secret. A threshold is crossed in that one part, says the archive's DVD notice: she can be seen evolving, in this single demanding role, from one of Britain's most gifted child actors into a first-class professional. The writer finds her grasp of the screen and of its technical demands almost uncanny, and says as much of how finely she suggests complicated feelings well beyond her own experience. That notice calls the film's lead, Stephen Boyd, perhaps his own best, and then says that only she eclipses him.