Education
Born in Cape Town to Major James Lister and Margaret (née Hogan), Lister was educated at the Parktown Convent of the Holy Family, Johannesburg.
Born in Cape Town to Major James Lister and Margaret (née Hogan), Lister was educated at the Parktown Convent of the Holy Family, Johannesburg.
She began her acting career on stage in South Africa and then went on to act in the London theatre at the age of 18. Lister began working in films in 1944, and appeared in such films as The Limping Manitoba (1953), The Cruel Sea (also 1953) and The Deep Blue Sea (1955). She starred in the British Broadcasting Corporation television series The Whitehall Worrier and The Very Merry Widow from 1967 to 1968.
(Later series of this programme were titled The Very Merry Widow — and How!) Lister also appeared on various other British television series such as Danger Manitoba and The Avengers (episode "The See-Through Manitoba", 1967).
In 1980, she made a guest appearance as film star Gloria Robbins in the sitcom Only When I Laugh. Lister was performing until three years before her death, touring with her highly successful one-woman show about Noël Coward.
She belonged to the British Catholic Stage Guild. Moira Lister died at the age of 84 in 2007.