Mary Clare was born Mary Clare Absalom in 1892 (not 1894 as some other reports state) and began her career on the London stage at the age of 18 in 1910. She appeared in the film The Black Spider in 1920, and thereafter divided her time between the stage and the cinema. In September 1936 she played the leading role in the play Laura Garnett, by Leslie and Sewell Stokes, at the Arts Theatre Club, London.
In the theatre, she played the lead role of the victim in Agatha Christie's 1945 play Appointment with Death
In films, she was mainly a character actress and in later life often portrayed mature ladies who had strength of character or were autocratic. In 1938, she was featured opposite Robert Donat and Rosalind Russell in The Citadel. The sole film in which she played the leading role was Mrs Pym of Scotland Yard in 1939. She appeared in two of the British-made Alfred Hitchcock films, Young and Innocent and The Lady Vanishes, playing vastly different characters. She played the part of Linda Singer in two different versions of The Constant Nymph and had previously been in the stage version. In 1956, she was in several TV episodes in British television.
Mary Clare married Lionel Percival Mawhood (1888-1935: died aged 47) at the District of St Martin, London in September Quarter 1915. They had two children and it appears that, following Lionel's death, Mary Clare never remarried.
