Vera Miles

About

Vera June Miles (née Ralston; born August 23, 1930) is an American former actress. She is known for appearing in John Ford’s Western films The Searchers (1956) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and for playing Lila Crane in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and Richard Franklin’s sequel Psycho II (1983).
Miles’s other film credits include Tarzan’s Hidden Jungle (1955), The Wrong Man (1956), A Touch of Larceny (1959), Follow Me, Boys! (1966), Hellfighters (1968), Sergeant Ryker (1968), and Molly and Lawless John (1972).

Vera June Ralston was born in Boise City, Oklahoma, on August 23, 1930.
She grew up first in Pratt, Kansas, and later lived in Wichita, where she worked nights as a Western Union operator-typist and graduated from Wichita North High School in 1948. She was crowned Miss Kansas in 1948 and was the third runner-up in the Miss America contest.

Miles moved to Los Angeles in 1948 and landed small roles in television and film, including a minor role as a chorus girl in Two Tickets to Broadway (1951), a musical starring Janet Leigh, with whom Miles would co-star nine years later in the classic Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho. She used her…