Portland Mason Hollywood child star, daughter of James and Pamela Mason

She inspired and starred

in the short film The Child (1954), written by her mother and directed by her father. While this may be dismissed as a family ego-trip, Portland also appeared in mainstream feature films in the US and UK.

She had a major supporting role as Gregory Peck's daughter in Nunnally Johnson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956) and she seemed perfectly cast as out-of-control schoolgirl Georgina in the British comedy The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery (1966).

It was one of her last films, and the young girl who had once been a staple of tabloid journalism subsequently shied away from any publicity and drifted into obscurity. She has died in hospital in Santa Monica, California, after a long

illness, aged 55.

Born in Los Angeles in 1948, Portland Mason grew up Beverly Hills, in a 10,000-square-foot mansion that had previously been owned by Buster Keaton. The Masons were

one of the most talked-about

couples in town. Their relationship began on the set of I Met A Murderer (1939), though Pamela was married to its director, Roy Kellino, at

the time.

Pamela divorced Kellino and married Mason, though Kellino would later move in with them, and he was producer of The Child, the 30-minute short that launched Portland's screen career. ''Portland really wrote it,'' Pamela Mason told the Los Angeles Times. ''I just watched her and wrote about what she did.''

The Masons were often photographed with their children, Portland and Morgan, and their upbringing was a major talking point in a more conservative age. Mason would retire for the night at 10pm, his wife famously stayed up all night partying, and their daughter was left to decide for herself when to go to bed.

''Pam was determined to

see that the baby fitted into their lives and their routine,'' Pamela's half-sister Diana de Rosso recalled in her book James Mason: A Personal Biography, ''and consequently Portland was brought up without a nanny and outside the confines of what was termed a 'normal timetable'.

''The usual strictures that applied to most children were not adhered to in her case, and apparently she suffered no

ill-effects. On the contrary, she was reared in an atmosphere of love and affection, albeit, to most eyes, an unusual situation which gave rise to several snide press reports.''

De Rosso did however admit that Portland had a habit of kicking visitors, which went unsensored by her parents.

The Child may be regarded as a work of precocious genius or dismissed as a vanity project - it is hard to say now, as

no-one seems to have seen it in recent times. However, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit was a prestige drama, examining the problems of a former soldier returning to civilian

life, with Peck starring as the ex-soldier, Jennifer Jones as

his wife and Portland as

their daughter.

The whole Mason family, including baby Morgan, appeared in an episode of the TV series Panic! in 1957, playing a family trapped in a deserted skyscraper, and Portland had small roles in her father's films Bigger than Life (1956) and Cry Terror! (1958).

In 1959, she appeared on stage with her mother in a

production of Murder in the Red Barn, directed by her father, and the following year she played a princess in an episode of Shirley Temple's Storybook on television.

Her parents divorced in the mid-1960s and Portland's film career lasted only a little longer, ending with a small role in the Dirk Bogarde espionage caper Sebastian (1968). She faded from view, before hitting the headlines again in recent years when she and Morgan were involved in a bitter wrangle over their father's estate and even his ashes. They had expected to inherit after the death of their father's second wife, but she reportedly left

the (pounds) 15m fortune to an

Indian religious sect. As well

as her brother, Portland is

also suvived by her husband,

Rob Schuyler.

Portland Mason, actress;

born November 26, 1948,

died May 10, 2004.