Barbara Steele Nude

Huge brown eyes spilling over with emotion, a narrow pale face, a frame of hair as black as night, Barbara Steele was destined to be the haunted heroine of horror film classics. Though the British actress was imported to the US by 20th Century Fox to play Elvis Presley’s love interest in Flaming Star (1960), she was replaced only a week after shooting started by Barbara Eden, who was deemed more suitable for the role. Back in Europe, her haunting beauty found her better cast, and cast again, in a slew of Gothic horror films as the fair, doomed damsel and as the evil enchantress, sometimes both in the same picture. Her career-defining dual role as both pure and beautiful Princess Asa Vajda, and as centuries old undead witch Katie Vajda in Black Sunday (1960), originally released in the UK as The Mask of Satan, placed Barbara on a path to Goth glam from which she would never fully return. Notable film roles included Cinzie Hichcock in The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962), Elisabeth Blackwood in Castle of Blood (1964), and as Cleo Hauff in Terror-Creatures from the Grave (1965). She also starred as Gloria Morin in Federico Fellini’s 8-1/2 (1963), and as Bozena in German New Wave director Volker Schlondörff’s Young Törless (1966). Moving back to the US, she earned significant roles in Jonathan Demme’s Caged Heart (1974) as Supt. McQueen; as Betts in Shivers (1975), where she made us shiver with her see-through, wet, white shirt; and as Dr. Mengers in Piranha (1978). Barbara also made a good showing on TV as Dr. Julia Hoffman in Dark Shadows in 1991, and Miranda in Castlevania in 2020. Behind the scenes, she earned an Emmy for being a producer of mini-series War and Rememberance (1978). Awesome on and off the camera—Mr. Skin’s kinda woman.