Biography

She died of cancer, in poverty, with only a few friends attending her funeral.

In 1963 she was involved in a serious automobile accident in France. For six hours she lay unconscious, not knowing that she was close to losing her right eye. The disfigurement extended to her lip as well. After that, she spent two years undergoing plastic surgery, and no damage remained in her face except a little curl at her upper lip.

In 1964 she refused to sign a contract in Hollywood running for seven years. She said that the payment would have been great, but that "the contract was a whole book. I think that even to go to the toilet I would have needed a permission."

On November 26, 1977, she gave birth to a baby daughter, Louisa Erika, in Rome. It was a premature delivery, and the girl died the same day. The child was interred at the Camposanto Teutonico cemetery in Rome. Mell never revealed the father's identity.

She was good friends with Brigitte Bardot in the 1970s.