Caregivers on screen

With her role in the comedy “Uptown Girls” as a pampered young woman who becomes the nanny for a lonely, steely little girl, Brittany Murphy joins the pantheon of such performers as Julie Andrews, Bette Davis, Robin Williams and Deborah Kerr who have played nannies, baby-sitters or governesses on the big and small screen. And nannies have come in all demeanors and temperaments -- some fun-loving like Murphy, others fretful and anxious, still others evil incarnate. A few have been men, and others were of the four-legged variety.

Here’s a look at some famous screen nannies:

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Just one of the girls

“Sitting Pretty” (1948): Former musical comedy star Clifton Webb made a name for himself in the 1940s in such films as “Laura” for playing prissy, acerbic, sophisticated characters. He was at his best in this rollicking comedy as Lynn Belvedere, an eccentric genius who answers an ad to become a live-in baby-sitter for the three young sons of a harried couple (Robert Young and Maureen O’Hara) who live in a gossip-crazed suburban community. Mr. Belvedere ends up working miracles with the children, but never tells the family what he does on his evenings off. Webb received an Oscar nomination for his joyous performance and followed up this hit with two sequels.

“Mrs. Doubtfire” (1993): When this box office hit is funny, it’s very funny, but when it falls into bathos, it’s deadly. But despite its flaws, the comedy is worth watching for Robin Williams’ brilliantly wacky performance as an actor, who after a bitter divorce from his staid wife (Sally Field), disguises himself as a dowdy English nanny so he can spend time with his three children, of whom his wife has custody. There are many terrific set pieces, including Mrs. Doubtfire’s dubious attempts to keep house and a particularly side-splitting sequence at a restaurant.

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Nanny in peril

“The Innocents” (1961): Jack Clayton’s adaptation of Henry James’ novella “The Turn of the Screw,” is one of the scariest films ever made. Deborah Kerr gives one of her greatest performances as a rather high-strung governess, Miss Giddens, who believes that the spirits of the dead former governess and the evil groundskeeper haunt the house and the grounds and are attempting to take over the souls of her two young charges (Martin Stephens, Pamela Franklin).

“Halloween” (1978): On All Hallow’s Eve, virginal teenage baby-sitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) finds herself a target of a psychotic masked murderer (actually her brother) who just escaped from the institution where he has been incarcerated since childhood in John Carpenter’s modern-day classic.

“When a Stranger Calls” (1979): Wide-eyed Carol Kane plays Jill Johnson in this popular thriller -- a baby-sitter gets phone calls from someone who keeps asking “Have you checked the children lately?”

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The unrequited nanny

“All This and Heaven Too” (1940): Bette Davis gives one of her more subdued performances in this handsome but overlong historical drama as Henriette Deluzy Desportes, a young woman who becomes governess to the three children of the Duc de Praslin (Charles Boyer). But it isn’t long before the Duc’s insanely jealous wife (Barbara O’Neil) begins to despise Henriette, especially after the governess nurses one of her children back from near-death. Eventually, she demands that the governess be dismissed. When the duchess is murdered, the Duc is arrested for the crime and the unemployed and penniless Henriette is charged as his accomplice.

“The King and I” (1956): Kerr also plays one of the best-loved governesses, Anna Leonowens, in this lush adaptation of the Richard Rodgers-Oscar Hammerstein Broadway musical. Kerr’s well-educated, prim and proper Anna, a widow with a young son, accepts a job as live-in governess to the King of Siam’s (Yul Brynner) multitude of children. Of course, the two fall in love but because of station and prejudice, it remains unrequited and unspoken. Their feelings, however, do shine in the film’s greatest scene, the “Shall We Dance” number in which the two waltz around the room at a frenzied pace.

Anna’s story was also made as a straight drama with 1946’s “Anna and the King” with Irene Dunne and Rex Harrison and in 1999’s “Anna and the King” with Jodie Foster and Chow Yun-Fat.

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The warm nanny

“The Member of the Wedding (1952): Legendary singer-actress Ethel Waters reprises her acclaimed Broadway role in this tasteful, poignant adaptation of Carson McCullers’ novel and play as Bernice Sadie Brown, the world-wise and warm African American housekeeper who is practically both mother and father to 12-year-old tomboy Frankie Adams (Julie Harris).

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The comedic nanny

“Nanny and the Professor” (1970-71): In this fluffiest of sitcoms, Juliet Mills plays Nanny, a.k.a. Phoebe Figalilly, a “Mary Poppins”-type British nanny who just happens to have psychic powers. Richard Long plays the professor, the widowed Harold Everett, and Trent Lehman and Kim Richards were her two charges.

“Adventures in Baby-Sitting” (1987): A young Elisabeth Shue stars in this uneven Chris Columbus comedy about a carefree teenage girl, Chris Parker, who gets more than she bargains for when she agrees to baby-sit for a preteen girl and her younger brother after her boyfriend cancels a date.

“The Nanny” (1993-99): Fran Drescher certainly let herself be heard around the world as the whiny, nasal-voiced Fran Fine of Queens, who after being fired from her job and abandoned by her boyfriend becomes a most unusual nanny to the three children of a rich Broadway producer (Charles Shaughnessy). Before the curtain rang down on the series, Fran and the producer finally wed.

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The evil nanny

“The Nanny” (1965): One of the best British-made Hammer horror films finds Davis as a prim and proper longtime nanny who is actually a psychotic murderess. When her 10-year-old charge (William Dix) is released from a mental institution after a two-year stay for the alleged murder of his younger sister, he refuses to talk to the nanny or eat the meals she prepares or even use the room she has made for him. He blames her for the bathtub drowning death of his sister, though no one believes him. It isn’t long, though, before Nanny decides to do away with him.

“The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” (1992): Rebecca De Mornay gives a coolly malevolent performance in the Curtis Hanson shocker as Peyton Flanders, the seemingly perfect nanny who is actually intent on wrecking the lives of the family she is working for.

“The Babysitter” (1995): Alicia Silverstone leaves men clueless in this creepy thriller about a seductive teenage baby-sitter who is the object of obsession of two young boys and the father of the children she’s watching over.

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The Julie nanny

“Mary Poppins” (1964): Perhaps no other actress is better known for her nanny roles than Julie Andrews, who won an Oscar for her film debut as Pamela L. Travers’ practically perfect nanny in Walt Disney’s exceptional musical comedy. With her hair worn in a tight bun, spit-spot demeanor, lilting soprano voice, magical satchel and flying umbrella, Andrews created a nanny every kid in the world would want.

“The Sound of Music” (1965): The year after “Mary Poppins,” Andrews played another enchanting singing-dancing nanny in the Oscar-winning best film based on the Rodgers-Hammerstein musical about Maria Rainer Von Trapp, an exuberant young woman training without much success to become a nun at a Salzburg, Austria, convent, who is sent by her Mother Superior to become the governess to a brood of motherless children and ends up falling in love and marrying their handsome but stern father (Christopher Plummer). She can even make outfits out of curtains!

“Eloise at the Plaza” (2003): With ample padding, a long gray wig and Cockney accent, Andrews is almost unrecognizable as the beloved nanny of the irrepressible Eloise, the precocious 6-year-old girl who lives in the Plaza and has a pug named Weenie in this ABC-TV version of Kay Thompson’s classic book.

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Nanny in the ruff

“Peter Pan” (1960 and 2003): Sometimes nannies don’t even have to be human. One of the most beloved nannyies in literature is James M. Barrie’s Katie Nana, the big old dog that watches over the three Darling children in Victorian-era London. In the 1960 musical TV version starring Mary Martin, an actor in a dog suit, Norman Shelly, played the role. In P.J. Hogan’s new version of “Peter Pan,” opening on Christmas Day, the role of Katie Nana is played by three St. Bernard dogs.