The busty star of an Alfred Hitchcock classic could be commemorated at the house where she lived out her final decades.

Admirers are preparing to send English Heritage an application for a blue plaque on the north Kingston home of 1940s star Margaret Lockwood.

The actress, who starred in Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, moved to the property in Upper Park Road in the 1960s, becoming increasingly reclusive before her death in 1990.

She rose to prominence as the first British actress groomed for studio stardom in the 1930s, but is best remembered for her role as upper-class highway robber Barbara in The Wicked Lady in 1945.

Hilton Tims, who wrote Lockwood’s only biography when he was news editor of the Surrey Comet, first interviewed her in the 1960s when he worked for the Daily Mail.

He said: “She was a very private person, which was odd for someone who had been the biggest star in her day.

“She was quite reserved, but once you broke through she was hilarious. She had the most raucous laugh I have even heard on a woman, which seemed quite out of character with her personality.

“Her breakthrough was that she became the first actress in film who was thoroughly wicked, but she was only wicked in three films.

“She had a kind of personality that no other actress in British cinema had. They were terribly refined, but Margaret was terribly down to earth.

“I think she should be commemorated. She did have a unique place in the British cinema in her day, and she did become the most popular actress in Britain with the public.”

Lockwood married Rupert Leon in 1937, and they had a daughter Julia who later appeared with her in TV series The Flying Swan in 1965. The couple divorced in 1950.

She was made a CBE in 1981, and Kingston councillors named Margaret Lockwood Close after her.

Tudor ward councillor David Cunningham, who is supporting the bid, met her when he was canvassing.

He said: “I think in her day she was one of the foremost stars in the country, and a lot of people remember her.

“She lived for a long time in Tudor ward, although she was fairly reclusive.”

An English Heritage spokesman said the blue plaque process can take a number of years.

• Hilton Tims, who was to become the only biographer of Britain’s leading lady of 1940s cinema, first met Margaret Lockwood when he interviewed her for the Daily Mail in the 1960s.

• The novelist, critic and then-news editor of the Surrey Comet talked to Sydenham High about her school days, and wrote about the censor’s concerns about her cleavage-revealing gowns in The Wicked Lady.

• The book was published in 1989, just months before Lockwood’s death in 1990. Mr Tims was one of the last people to visit her.

• Her Times obituary said: “When the author Hilton Tims was preparing his recent biography a stall holder from whom he was buying some flowers for her snatched up a second bunch and said, “Give her these from me. I used to love her films.”

• As England’s oldest royal borough, Kingston has a range of English Heritage blue plaques.

• Enid Blyton’s residence in Hook Road, Chessington, was honoured in 1997.

• Opera singer Dame Nellie Melba’s house in Coombe Lane West received its plaque in 2000.

• Rupert the Bear illustrator Alfred Bestall’s Crane Park residence in Surbiton received its memorial in 2006.

• And last year speed record holders Sir Malcolm and Donald Campbell’s home in Kingston Hill was commemorated.

• Striptease artist Phyllis Dixey ruffled feathers from beyond the grave in November 2011 when a blue plaque was proposed for her home in Wentworth Court, Surbiton.