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Simmons was born in Lower Holloway, London, England, to Charles Simmons and his wife, Winifred ( Loveland ) Simmons.
Her father, a physical education teacher ( who had represented Great Britain in the 1912 Summer Olympics ), taught briefly at Sidcot School, and sometime during this period Simmons followed her elder sister on to the village stage and sang songs such as " Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow ".
Returning to London and just enrolled at the Aida Foster School of Dance, she was spotted by the director Val Guest, who cast her in the Margaret Lockwood vehicle Give Us the Moon.
Small roles in several other films followed including the high profile Caesar and Cleopatra, produced by Gabriel Pascal.
Prior to moving to Hollywood, she played the young Estella in David Lean's version of Great Expectations ( 1946 ) and Ophelia in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet ( 1948 ), for which she received her first Oscar nomination.
It was the experience of working on Great Expectations that caused her to pursue an acting career more seriously:
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