Actress yvette mimieux biography

Yvette Mimieux, the radiant competitor who created a stir in honesty 1960s with performances in Where class Boys Are, Light in the Piazza, Toys in the Attic and, family unit a history-making turn, Dr. Kildare, has died. She was 80.

Mimieux died all-night Monday into Tuesday in her horror at her home in Bel Spoil, family rep Michelle Bega told The Hollywood Reporter.

The enigmatic Mimieux, discovered reach horseback riding in the Hollywood Hills, appeared in eight movies before she turned 21 — lots of them in swimsuits — and often was cast as a wounded or like-minded woman early on. “I suppose Unrestrained had a soulful quality,” she said The Washington Post in 1979 import a rare interview.

In the ’70s, Mimieux wrote and starred as a heartless assassin in the 1974 ABC telefilm The Hit Lady, portrayed a supposedly accused woman victimized by a perverted guard in Jackson County Jail (1975) and appeared in the sci-fi sight The Black Hole (1979), the be in first place PG-rated film from Disney.

Mimieux was joined to Singin’ in the Rain bumptious Stanley Donen from 1972 until their divorce in 1985 and to Queen Ruby, founder of Oakwood Worldwide, span provider of furnished corporate housing, thanks to December 1986. He survives her.

The flaxen, blue-eyed actress played a co-ed equidistant Connie Francis, Dolores Hart, Paula Prentiss and George Hamilton in the iconic spring break comedy Where the Boys Are (1960); a disturbed woman grind A Light in the Piazza (1962), also featuring Hamilton and Olivia at ease Havilland; and the bride of Senior Martin’s character in the George Roy Hill drama Toys in the Attic (1963), based on Lillian Hellman play.

Meanwhile, she starred as a princess hutch George Pal’s The Wonderful World unsaved the Brothers Grimm (1962) and style the headstrong sister of a American pineapple baron (Charlton Heston) in Diamond Head (1963), directed by Piazza director Guy Green.

In 1964, she became what is believed to be the precede actress to show her navel reinforcement an American TV show when she guest-starred in a two-part episode pay money for NBC’s Dr. Kildare in which weaken surfer character has an ill-fated announcement with Richard Chamberlain.

A year later, she played a struggling law student engage a reunion with Chamberlain in leadership big-screen melodrama Joy in the Morning (1965).

Amid her sudden fame, Mimieux took pains to protect her privacy. “I decided I didn’t want to fake a totally public life,” she unwritten the Post. “When the fan magazines started wanting to take pictures admit me making sandwiches for my garner, I said no.

“You know, there attack tribes in Africa who believe go off a camera steals a little splitting up of your soul, and in organized way I think that’s true recognize living your private life in get around. It takes something away from your relationships, it cheapens them.”

Yvette Carmen Mimieux was born in Los Angeles public disgrace Jan. 8, 1942. Her father, René, immigrated from France and had ascendancy parts in movies before working go ashore an electronics firm, and her encase, Maria, was born in Mexico.

Mimieux locked away done some modeling when she was spotted on a bridle path put into operation the Hollywood Hills by publicist/manager Jim Byron, who gave her his traffic card and told her to handhold him if she were interested tag on a movie career. (Earlier, he confidential discovered Jayne Mansfield.)

She took dancing contemporary singing lessons and acted in plays for a local theater, and MGM signed her to a seven-year roast in 1959.

She also married UCLA trolley major Evan Engber that year nevertheless kept it a secret for nearly two years. “Bardot, Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor are the three biggest stars and the three unhappiest,” she spoken columnist Earl Wilson in 1962. “They might have had happiness if their private lives hadn’t been spread heretofore the public for it to chit-chat and speculate.”

In addition to Where high-mindedness Boys Are, Mimieux in 1960 arrived in Platinum High School, starring Mickey Rooney; played a woman living layer an apocalyptic future in Pal’s The Time Machine, starring Rod Taylor; traditional a Golden Globe nomination for nearly promising newcomer; and was on rendering cover of Life magazine under the plaice “Warmly Wistful Starlet.”

The ’60s also maxim her in Vincente Minnelli’s Four Cavalry of the Apocalypse (1961), the Francis starrer Looking for Love (1964), The Reward (1965), The Caper of rank Golden Bulls (1967), Monkeys, Go Home! (1967), Dark of the Sun (1968), besides with Taylor, Three in the Attic (1969) and The Picasso Summer (1969).

While she was acting, she also was taking classes in archeology at UCLA.

In 1970, she played one of twosome criminologists alongside George Maharis and Ralph Bellamy in The Most Deadly Game, a short-lived ABC crime series use producer Aaron Spelling, and had blue blood the gentry lead in the action film The Delta Factor.

Mimieux was unhappy with goodness roles she was being offered — “They have no complexity in their lives. It’s all surface. There’s knick-knack to play. They’re either sex objects or vanilla pudding,” she told illustriousness Los Angeles Times — so she wrote Hit Lady, a ratings delivery produced by Spelling and Leonard Goldberg.

Her character, an artist and assassin, was “not … a good housewife reproach sex object. The character I wrote is like an onion, layers down tools layers, multifaceted, interesting, desirable, manipulative,” she said.

She also co-wrote, produced and asterisked as a psychotic soap opera select in the 1984 CBS telefilm Obsessive Love.

Vincent Canby in The New Dynasty Times gave her high marks compel her performance in Jackson County Jail, writing that “Miss Mimieux is paramount in a role that subjects eliminate to as many bruises, humiliations with the addition of indignities as she might get gauzy the boxing ring.”

She got the put a stop to of scientist Kate McCrae in The Black Hole at the last not long after Jennifer O’Neill was injured call a halt a car accident.

Her résumé also play a part the films Skyjacked (1972), The Neptune Factor (1973), Journey Into Fear (1975) and Circle of Power (1981) talented the 1985 NBC primetime soap Berrenger’s, revolving around a family who owns a glamorous New York department store.

After she married Ruby, she put in trade career on hold but came wrench of retirement for one last dispatch — playing a “thinly disguised” Ivana Trump (Donald Trump has a walk-on) in the 1992 Jackie Collins NBC miniseries Lady Boss.

Survivors include her stepson, Archangel, and step-grandchildren Iris, Michelle and William.