Mandy Miller is an English child actor

Child actor

The term child actor or child actress is generally applied to a child acting in motion pictures or television, but also to an adult who began his or her acting career as a child; to avoid confusion, the latter is also called a former child actor...

 who made a number of films in the 1950s and is probably best remembered for her recording of the song "Nellie the Elephant

Nellie the Elephant

Nellie the Elephant is a song written in 1956 by Ralph Butler and Peter Hart about a fictional intelligent elephant of the same name.-Original version:...

".
She was christened Carmen but called Mandy by her family. Her career tended to involve serious acting

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

 roles rather than comedy

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

, even in her first small part in The Man in the White Suit

The Man in the White Suit

The Man In The White Suit is a 1951 satirical comedy film made by Ealing Studios. It starred Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, and Cecil Parker, and was directed by Alexander Mackendrick. It followed a common Ealing Studios theme of the "common man" against the Establishment...

, where she was a sad-faced little girl who helped Alec Guinness

Alec Guinness

Sir Alec Guinness, CH, CBE was an English actor. He was featured in several of the Ealing Comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets in which he played eight different characters. He later won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai...

 escape his pursuers. She was a natural actress and put in a much praised performance in her second film, another Ealing

Ealing

Ealing is a suburban area of west London, England and the administrative centre of the London Borough of Ealing. It is located west of Charing Cross and around from the City of London. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. It was historically a rural village...

 production, Mandy

Mandy (film)

Mandy was a 1952 Ealing Studios film, based on the book The Day Is Ours by Hilda Lewis, with screenplay by Nigel Balchin and Jack Whittingham, and direction by Alexander Mackendrick and Fred Sears. Another title for the film was Crash of Silence...

(1952), playing a deaf child whose parents (played by Terence Morgan

Terence Morgan

Terence Ivor Grant Morgan was an English actor in theatre, cinema and television. He was the nephew of British character actor Verne Morgan...

 and Phyllis Calvert

Phyllis Calvert

Phyllis Calvert was an English film, stage and television actress. She was one of the leading stars of the Gainsborough melodramas of the 1940s....

) did not know how to cope with raising her.

She was also convincing in the next film, Background

Background (1953 film)

Background is a 1953 British domestic drama film dealing with the effects of divorce, directed by Daniel Birt and starring Valerie Hobson, Philip Friend and Norman Wooland...

(1953), along with the other two child actors in this film about a family breaking up due to an impending divorce.