According to film critic David Thomson, "Dors represented that period between the end of the war and the coming of Lady Chatterley in paperback, a time when sexuality was naughty, repressed, and fit to burst.

This led her to work as a model in art classes, and she began to appear in such local theatre productions as A Weekend in Paris and Death Takes a Holiday.

[10] During the signing of contracts, in agreement with her father, she changed her contractual surname to Dors, the maiden name of her maternal grandmother; this was at the suggestion of her mother Mary.

Dors disliked the Charm School, but received more publicity than other students at the time in part because of her willingness to be photographed in glamour shots and attending premieres.

[23] David Shipman later argued that when Dors "was young she was very funny: she did a neat parody of the man-mad teenager, the nubile cousin who ogles the best man at the wedding breakfast, the office junior ready for a bit of slap and tickle behind the filing cupboard.

She then appeared on stage in The Good Young Man with Digby Wolfe[27] and in September 1949, with Marcel Le Bon in a touring production of Lisette, a three-act play by Douglas Sargeant[28].

In November 1949, Dors was contracted out to Ealing Studios, which put her in Dance Hall (1950), as one of the four female leads, along with Natasha Perry, Petula Clark, and Jane Hylton.

[30] In February 1950, she went into the play Man of the World with Roger Livesey and Lionel Jeffries, directed by Kenneth Tynan, which opened at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.

"[24] Dors landed the female lead supporting Ronald Shiner in Worm's Eye View (1951), a comedy that was one of the most popular movies of 1951 in Britain; her fee was £250.

[4] After her death, friends and biographers said that Hamilton would lend Dors as a sexual favour to hiring producers and leading actors, much as in the "casting couch" practices of Hollywood.

[56] Dors' career stepped up another level when she was cast in a supporting role alongside Glynis Johns in a prison drama, The Weak and the Wicked (1954), directed by J. Lee Thompson.

[64] Dors was offered the female lead in Thompson's As Long as They're Happy (1955) with Jack Buchanan, but was unable to accept; she agreed to do a guest role, instead, at £200 a day.

She ranked after Dirk Bogarde, John Mills, Norman Wisdom, Alastair Sim, Kenneth More, Jack Hawkins, Richard Todd, and Michael Redgrave, and in front of Alec Guinness.

It took me 10 years [of] hard work in poor[ly received] pictures, in revue, in straight plays, and touring to become a star, and I don't intend to let Hollywood push me about, crop my hair, change my style or personality.

[4][87] She was meant to make three films produced by Anna Neagle, the first with Frankie Vaughan called The Cast Iron Shore; however, Dors pulled out in September.

[81] Having been forced by Hamilton "at gunpoint" to sign over all of her assets prior to the end of their marriage, and in need of money to pay her divorce lawyers and their accountants, she agreed to the suggestion of agent Joseph Collins to undertake a theatre-based cabaret tour titled "The Diana Dors Show".

[4] This brought negative publicity to the show, but audience numbers remained high, which allowed Dors extra time to explain her affairs to a subsequent Inland Revenue investigation of her cash holdings.

"[6] After the birth of her first child in February 1960, and wishing to stay in the United States with Dawson, Dors undertook a cabaret contract to headline at the Dunes hotel and casino in Las Vegas.

During this period, she appeared in a TV adaptation of A Taste of Honey (1971) and episodes of Z Cars, Dixon of Dock Green, Just William, The Sweeney, Hammer House of Horror, and Shoestring.

Dors' film work included Hannie Caulder (1971); The Pied Piper (1972); The Amazing Mr. Blunden (1972); Swedish Wildcats (1972); Nothing but the Night (1972); Theatre of Blood (1973); Steptoe and Son Ride Again (1973); From Beyond the Grave (1973); and Craze (1974).

[124] This resulted in her working for TV-am, ITV's breakfast station, in the summer of 1983, in a regular slot focusing on diet and nutrition, which later developed into an agony aunt segment.

[125] Her last public appearance was in cabaret at Harpoon Louie's, Earl's Court, West London, on 15 April 1984, where she looked considerably frail, but stood throughout her whole set.

Dors was married three times: In 1949, while filming Diamond City, she had a relationship with businessman Michael Caborn-Waterfield, who later founded the Ann Summers chain, which he named after a former girlfriend.

[4] Dors gave all her guests full access to the entire house; her son Jason Lake later alleged in various media interviews and publications that she had equipped it with 8 mm movie cameras.

The young starlets were made aware of the arrangements and were allowed to attend for free in return for making sure that their celebrity partners performed in bed at the right camera angles.

On 10 October 1984, Lake did a telephone interview with Daily Express journalist Jean Rook and then walked into their son's bedroom and took his own life by firing a shotgun into his mouth.

After solicitors' bills, outstanding tax payments, death duties, and other distributions, the combined estates of Dors and Lake left little for the upkeep of their son Jason (aged 14), who was subsequently made a ward of court to his half-brother Gary Dawson in Los Angeles.

[135] On 14 September 2019, Jason Dors-Lake, the son of Diana Dors and Alan Lake, was reported to have died three days after his 50th birthday at his flat in Notting Hill Gate, London, from the combined effects of alcohol and tramadol intoxication.

[4] His stepfather Alan Lake supposedly knew the key that would crack the code, but he died by suicide soon after her death and Dawson was left with an apparently unsolvable puzzle.

Inforenz then used their own cryptanalysis software to suggest a 10-letter decryption key, DMARYFLUCK (short for Diana Mary Fluck, Dors's real name).