1931-1984
Born Diana Mary Fluck in Swindon, Diana had high hopes for a career in film at a young age. After entering a beauty contest in her early teens, she gained work modelling in art classes and began participating in local theatre productions.
Diana was offered a place at the London Academy of Musica and Dramatic Art at the age of 14. By lying about her age, she became the college’s youngest ever student, supplementing her weekly allowance by posing for the London Camera Club. In her first term she was signed to an agency. By looking older than she was, she secured a few small film roles early on in her studies and by the time she was 16 (in 1948) she had appeared in six films.
Diana took on the maiden name of her grandmother as a stage name commenting, ‘They asked me to change my name…I suppose they were afraid that if my real name Diana Fluck was in lights and one of the lights blew…’
Her career spanned all the decades of her adult life – her final film Steaming (1985) released a year after her death from ovarian cancer at the age of 52.
The statue sits outside the Swindon cinema complex. Diana is captured in a slinky evening gown and stole as she appeared in the 1956 crime drama Yield To The Night.
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