Jill Adams

Jill Adams (22 July 1930 – 13 May 2008) was an English actress, artist and fashion model. She featured or starred in over 25 films during the 1950s and 1960s.

Life

Jill Adams was born Jill Siggins in London in 1930, the daughter of the silent-screen actress Molly Adair (real name Mary Marguerite Potter). Jill's New Zealand-born father, Arthur James Siggins, had met the Irish-American Adair when she was on location filming '' The Blue Lagoon'' (1923). Siggins, a former member of the British South Africa Police and an expert animal handler, worked on the film ''The Four Feathers'' (1921), and later wrote a book about the experience, ''Shooting with Rifle and Camera''.

Jill was one of four children. When she was six years old, Jill moved to Wales where she continued her education, after which she worked for four years on a farm. Her ambition was to become an artist, and she moved to London to pursue that career, taking work as a sales assistant, secretary, and window dresser. After working as a window dresser, by 1944 Adams was an assistant artist at Mr & Mrs Jones, a department store, where she was required to attend fashion shows and sketch the clothes. One day a model failed to arrive, and Adams, found to be the perfect size, stepped in, thus beginning her modelling career, which included a flag-hoisting recruitment poster for the Women's Royal Naval Service. During her modelling days she was 'discovered' and began an acting career that spanned two decades.

Her most notable films were comedies, at which she excelled, such as '' Doctor at Sea'' (1955), '' Brothers in Law'' (1957) and '' The Green Man'' (1956), in which she starred with Alastair Sim and George Cole. She also did some stage and radio work.

In 1951 she married a young American navy yeoman, Jim Adams, whose surname she adopted professionally, which resulted in the birth of a daughter, Tina. The same year, Jill Adams had a part in a late-night stage revue, ''On with the New'', starring Anthony Newley, and though her marriage ended in 1953, she began taking bit roles in movies – dancing with Nigel Patrick in ''Forbidden Cargo'', appearing in the Arthur Askey comedy ''The Love Match'' (1954), and in '' Doctor at Sea'' (1955) with Dirk Bogarde.

She had one of her first substantial roles in the sprightly "Quota quickie" movie '' One Jump Ahead'' (1955), in a rare villainous portrayal as a murderess who was once an old flame of a reporter ( Paul Carpenter) who is usually "one jump ahead" of the police. Adams was one of Rex Harrison's seven wives in the sophisticated comedy ''The Constant Husband'' (1955).

At the peak of her acting career in 1957, Adams married the well-known BBC
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