“I’d been a masturbatory fantasy for an entire generation of young men. I mean, that made a girl feel good.” Jacqueline Pearce not only was the fantasy, she fully acknowledged and embraced it. The British-born beauty is talking about her nearly bald role of Servalan, Supreme Commander, President, and Empress of the Federation, on the English cult sci-fi series Blake's 7. The character was originally written for a man, not unlike Ripley in Alien (1979), lucky for Jacqueline and all of us, the change in sex occurred, and a hard-on fantasy of a queen bitch was born. While she wore a plethora of sexy and fetishistic costumes on the show, she didn’t give us a look beyond the wardrobe until the film White Mischief (1987). Playing the character Idina, she stands up in the bathtub, rear decorated in sudsy bubbles, low-hanging pink-tipped breasts clean and cloying, and asks an audience of observers, “Doesn’t anybody want to fuck me?” (Mr. Skin is just going to leave that right there.) While her long and storied career involves primarily UK productions, Americans will recognize her from a few projects, including as Shah’s daughter in the epic movie Genghis Khan (1965) with Omar Sharif—one of Jacqueline’s first-ever roles; in Jerry Lewis’ Don’t Raise the Bridge, Lower the River (1968) as Pamela Lester; Lady Apthorpe in the film Princess Caraboo (1994) with Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline; and as Madame Jacqui in the US TV mini-series The Bourne Identity (1988) with Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith. Those same sci-fi fans who worshipped her as Servalan might also recognize her as Chessene in Doctor Who in 1985. With great regret, Mr. Skin has to share that Ms. Jacqueline Pearce passed away in September 2018, at the age of 74.
