Petra Davies was born on July 24, 1930 in London to Welsh parents, Petra and Vincent Davies. She was brought up in Newport, Wales. In 1947 she enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1947 and taking her first size-able television role a year later in Whiteoaks (1949).Several of her television appearances were in costume dramas such as Vanity Fair (1956) with Joyce Redman as Becky Sharpe, and as Jane Fairfax in Emma (1960). She played Elizabeth in a touring version of 'Pride and Prejudice', directed by Sheila Hancock. In 1962, she was given a leading role in the long-running stage thriller 'The Mouse-Trap' but had to give it up as she was pregnant with her second child by actor Jack May, to whom she was married from 1957 until his death in 1997. Having retired from acting in the 1990s, she died in London on March 22, 2016.