Deborah Kerr - star of THAT kiss with Burt Lancaster - dies aged 86

The actress, whose screen kiss with Burt Lancaster is regularly voted the greatest of all time, was surrounded by her family at home in Suffolk.

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She was nominated for a best actress Oscar six times for roles in films including From Here to Eternity with Lancaster, and The King and I - but never won.

However she was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1994 for her services to the film industry.

Yesterday, her agent Anne Hutton said: "She died on Tuesday. Her family was with her at the time. She was an elderly lady and just slipped away." Miss Kerr, who is survived by Peter Viertel, her husband of 47 years, was born in Helensburgh near Glasgow in 1921.

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The eldest child of naval architect Captain Arthur Kerr-Trimmer and his wife Kathleen, she trained as a ballet dancer and performed at Sadler's Wells in 1938.

Her film career began at the age of 20 with a role in Major Barbara which was released in 1941.

She went on to star alongside Hollywood greats such as Clark Gable in The Hucksters in 1947.

But it was her passionate clinch with Lancaster in the surf in the 1953 wartime drama From Here to Eternity that helped bring her lasting-fame. In July it was voted the most romantic screen kiss of all time in a Sky Movies poll of 1,000 moviegoers.

Miss Kerr went on to play a British governess who falls for Yul Brynner's King of Siam in The King and I in 1956. A year later she starred opposite Cary Grant in the weepie An Affair to Remember before co-starring with Robert Mitchum in The Sundowners in 1960.

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Later that decade, she abandoned the big screen for theatre and television work. Her popularity revived in 1993 with the release of the romantic movie Sleepless in Seattle which drew on scenes from An Affair to Remember.

At the time she said: "I am almost hysterical at the thought of making people cry with joy 30-odd years after Cary and I did our stuff.

"Cary and I certainly knew how to kiss. I think I understand what women see in the movie.

"There is a sweetness that is appealing and far removed from today's crudeness. It makes them realise the world has lost something delightful."

The actress is survived by Melanie and Francesca, daughters from her first marriage to Army officer Anthony Bartley.

In 1960, a year after they divorced, Miss Kerr wed U.S. author Viertel, now 87.

The couple had homes in Switzerland and Spain but returned to Britain so that she could be closer to her children as her ill health took its toll.

Miss Kerr suffered heartache three years ago when her brother, Edmund Trimmer, was killed in an unprovoked road-rage attack.

The 78-year-old retired journalist was punched in the face with such force it fractured his jaw and knocked him unconscious, causing him to hit his head on the pavement. He died of a brain haemorrhage.

His killer Eugene Warwood, 57, from Redditch in Worcestershire, was jailed for three-and-a-half years in 2005.