Britt Ekland

Britt Ekland was born in Sweden and grew up to be the poster girl for beautiful, big-eyed Scandinavian blondes. She attended a drama school and then joined a traveling theater group. With her looks as her passport, Britt entered films and became a star in Italy. When Peter Sellers met her in a hotel, he fell hard for her and they soon married. The combination of Sellers' stardom and her stunning beauty contributed to her fame (the fact that Sellers suffered a heart attack in bed on their wedding night did not hurt, either). She appeared in several films with her husband, including Le renard s'évade à 3 heures (1966), written by Neil Simon, and the forgettable Torero malgré lui (1967). Her claim to fame would come as the young girl who invented the striptease in Strip-tease chez Minsky (1968). After that, she appeared in a string of movies that were built around her looks and not much else. She did appear in some first-rate productions over the years, though, two of them being La loi du milieu (1971) and the cult classic The Wicker Man (1973). The high point in her career would be her role as Bond girl Mary Goodnight in L'Homme au pistolet d'or (1974). After her much publicized breakup with rocker Rod Stewart in 1977, Britt continued to make movies--both features and made-for-TV films--and tried the stage. By that time, the quality of her film projects had decreased markedly, and she was reduced to appearing in things like Vacances de folie (1985) and Beverly Hills Vamp (1989).