Clytie Jessop

Clytie Jessop, (1929-2017) was an Australian artist, actress, screenwriter and director, notable mainly for her association with cinematographer and film director Freddie Francis.

Jessop was born to Herman and Erica Lloyd-Jones in Sydney, New South Wales. She married her first husband antiques dealer, Peter Jessop, in London in 1952, with whom she adopted her daughter, Pandora.

Living in New York in the late 1950s she worked as an actor in off-Broadway productions. Her first screen role was as the ghost of Miss Jessel in The Innocents (1961), based on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw and starring Deborah Kerr. She appeared only in long shot. Francis had been cinematographer for The Innocents; he later directed Jessop in two minor horror roles for Hammer and Amicus, respectively: Nightmare (1964) and Torture Garden (1967).

She a later owned and ran the Clytie Jessop Gallery on Kings Road, Chelsea London at the height of the 1960s.

Following the arrest on obscenity charges of OZ magazine’s Richard Neville and Jim Anderson in 1971, she held a benefit exhibition called Ozjects D’Art featuring works by David Hockney among others.

1969 saw her marry Australian writer Peter Smalley, author of a series of historic naval novels about the HMS Expedient.

In 1986, she wrote, directed and produced the film Emma's War, starring Lee Remick.

Her sister Hermia married artist David Boyd.