Dame Celia Elizabeth Johnson DBE was an English actress, most famously remembered for her role in the 1945 film, Brief Encounter, opposite Trevor Howard, for which she received her only Oscar nomination.

She was born in Richmond and was educated at St Paul's Girls School in London. She trained in acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Her stage début was in Major Barbara in 1928. By 1931, she was starring as Ophelia in a New York production of Hamlet.

She made relatively few films, of which Brief Encounter is by far the best known. Other notable films include In Which We Serve (1942), The Captain's Paradise (1953),This Happy Breed (1944), I Believe in You (1952) and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). For her role as Miss McKay in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, she received the BAFTA Award as Best Supporting Actress. She generally played a genteel and/or repressed Englishwoman, though she proved in many stage productions to be a talented comedian.

She was created a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1958, and raised to Dame Commander (DBE) in 1981.

She was married to Peter Fleming, an explorer and writer who was a brother of Ian Fleming, from 1935 until his death in 1971. They had three children. One is the actress Lucy Fleming, a star of the 1970s BBC science-fiction drama series Survivors.

She died at home in Nettlebed, Oxfordshire, following a stroke in 1982, at the age of 73, survived by her children.