Celebrated stage and screen actress Samantha Eggar, known for her numerous appearances in horror films across three decades, has passed away, according to her daughter, Jenna Stern. The actress has suffered with illnesses for the last five years, and, according to Stern, passed away peacefully in her Sherman Oaks home on Friday at the age of 86.
Samantha Eggar began her career as a Shakespearean actress, appearing in shows like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, staged in 1962 by Tony Richardson. Her first film role came in Dr. Crippen the same year, starring opposite Donald Pleasence in the film about the Edwardian murderer or the same name, before starring in films like Walk, Don’t Run with Cary Grant, the original Doctor Doolittle, and The Light at the Edge of the World with Kirk Douglas and Yul Brynner. She also starred with Brynner in the 1972 series Anna and the King.
Her first horror credit came in the 1965 film The Collector, opposite the late Terence Stamp as a young art student kidnapped and held hostage by a crazed entomologist, for which she earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. She followed that up with The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun, before shooting the giallo film The Dead Are Alive in Italy in 1972, cementing her status as a horror maven — a title that would lead her to films like A Name for Evil, The Uncanny, and David Cronenberg’s The Brood throughout the 1970s.
The 1980s brought Demonoid: Messenger of Death and Curtains for the late star, before her film career slowed down going into the 1990s, ending with her last major role as Hera in Disney’s animated film Hercules. She maintained a steady television career through the early 2000s, however, appearing in episodes of Starsky and Hutch, Magnum, P.I., LA Law, All My Children, and Commander in Chief.
Eggar is survived by her daughter Jenna and son Nicholas Stern, as well as daughter-in-law Monday, son-in-law Brennan Brown, grandchildren Charlie, Isabel, and Calla, and sisters Margaret, Toni, and Vivien. Her family requests her memory be honored with donations to The Cousteau Society, the World Wildlife Fund, the ALS Association, the National Kidney Foundation and/or the British Olympic Association.
Our thoughts go out to Eggar’s family and friends at this difficult time.
