Sarah Miles was born in the small town of Ingatestone

Ingatestone

Ingatestone is a small town in Essex, England, with a population of about 4500 people. To the immediate north lies the village of Fryerning, and the two form the civil parish of Ingatestone and Fryerning....

, Essex

Essex

Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

, in South East England

South East England

South East England is one of the nine official regions of England, designated in 1994 and adopted for statistical purposes in 1999. It consists of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire, Surrey and West Sussex...

.
She first attended Roedean

Roedean School

-Roedeanians in fiction:* Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward * Dawn Drummond-Clayton * Emily James...

 but at the age of 15 she enrolled at RADA

Rada

Rada is the term for "council" or "assembly"borrowed by Polish from the Low Franconian "Rad" and later passed into the Czech, Ukrainian, and Belarusian languages....

, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art

Royal Academy of Dramatic Art

The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art is a drama school located in London, United Kingdom. It is generally regarded as one of the most renowned drama schools in the world, and is one of the oldest drama schools in the United Kingdom, having been founded in 1904.RADA is an affiliate school of the...

. Shortly after her completion at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Miles debuted in 1962 as Shirley Taylor in Term of Trial

Term of Trial

Term of Trial is a 1962 British drama film made by Romulus Films Ltd. and distributed by Warner-Pathé. It was written and directed by Peter Glenville and produced by James Woolf with James H. Ware as associate producer from a screenplay based on the novel of the same name by James Barlow...

(1962), co-starring with Laurence Olivier

Laurence Olivier

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...

, with whom she had a brief affair. The following year, Miles became a well-reputed actress of British New Wave with her roles in Joseph Losey

Joseph Losey

Joseph Walton Losey was an American theater and film director. After studying in Germany with Bertolt Brecht, Losey returned to the United States, eventually making his way to Hollywood...

's The Servant (1963) and in Michelangelo Antonioni

Michelangelo Antonioni

Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian modernist film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer.- Personal life :...

's Blowup

Blowup

Blowup is a 1966 film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, his first English-language film.It tells of a British photographer's accidental involvement with a murder, inspired by Julio Cortázar's short story, "Las babas del diablo" or "The Devil's Drool" , translated also as Blow-Up, and by the life...

(1966).

After acting in a variety of plays from 1966 to 1969, Miles was cast as Rosy Ryan, the daughter of Tom Ryan in David Lean

David Lean

Sir David Lean CBE was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best remembered for big-screen epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai , Lawrence of Arabia ,...

's 1970 film, Ryan's Daughter

Ryan's Daughter

Ryan's Daughter is a 1970 film directed by David Lean. The film, set in 1916, tells the story of a married Irish woman who has an affair with a British officer during World War I, despite opposition from her nationalist neighbours...

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