In the earliest stages of her career, Swedish actress Britt Ekland was "famous for being famous" as the wife of film comedian Peter Sellers. She appeared in two Italian pictures before marrying Sellers in 1963, and later co-starred with him in After the Fox (1966) and The Bobo (1967), and enjoyed good reviews for her role as a prim Quaker girl who inadvertently invented the strip-tease in The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968). Most of Ekland's subsequent films were low-budget action melodramas and leering sex comedies; she did acquit herself nicely, however, as James Bond's vis-à-vis in The Man With the Golden Gun (1974) and that year's cult thriller, The Wicker Man. Ekland will not likely be remembered for her cinematic triumphs, and chances are future generations will know her primarily from her brief alliance with Sellers or from her tempestuous and well-documented private life, as recounted in her autobiography True Britt.
Britt Ekland
Share on
Biography by AllMovie
Movie Highlights
/_derived_jpg_q90_310x470_m0/File_462001_11347_859.jpg)
Factsheet
- Was discovered by a casting director while drinking coffee in Rome.
- Married Peter Sellers soon after meeting him; they divorced after four years of wedded acrimony.
- First developed a sex-symbol image when she played an Amish girl who accidentally creates the striptease in the 1968 film The Night They Raided Minsky's.
- Best known for her role as a Bond girl in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974).
- Became romantically involved with crooner Rod Stewart in 1975 and inspired his hit song "You're in My Heart."
- Published her autobiography, True Britt, in 1980.
- Staged a one-woman show called Britt on Britt that took the audience through the ups and downs of her life.
- Was played by Charlize Theron in the 2004 biopic The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.