Dana Wynter

Active - 1951 - 1993  |   Born - Jun 8, 1931 in Berlin, Germany  |   Died - May 5, 2011   |   Genres - Drama, Mystery, Adventure

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Biography by AllMovie

Slim, ladylike British actress Dana Wynter spent most of her childhood in Rhodesia, where she attended Rhodes University as a pre-med student. An amateur preoccupation with theater led to a lifelong professional commitment; she made her first stage appearances before she turned 20, and her first film, White Corridors (1951), at 21. From 1955 through 1960 Wynter was under contract to 20th Century Fox studios in Hollywood. Usually called upon merely to exhibit cool-headed British reserve, she was given an excellent opportunity to display hysteria and near-lunacy in 1958's In Love and War. In films until the late '80s, Dana Wynter has also done a great deal of television; in 1966, she co-starred with Robert Lansing on the British-filmed espionage series The Man Who Never Was, and was cast (superbly) as Queen Elizabeth in the 1982 TV movie The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana.

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Factsheet

  • Born in Germany; grew up in England and Southern Rhodesia.
  • Began acting as a pre-med student in South Africa.
  • Arrived in the U.S. in 1953 and soon found work in such Golden Age TV dramas as Robert Montgomery Presents, The U.S. Steel Hour and Playhouse 90.
  • Best known for costarring in the 1956 sci-fi thriller Invasion of the Body Snatchers
  • Was a regular on the 1966-67 ABC spy series The Man Who Never Was.
  • Wrote a column for the British newspaper the Guardian in the 1980s.
  • Last role was as Ironside's wife in the 1993 Raymond Burr TV-movie The Return of Ironside.
  • Published a memoir, Other People, Other Places: Memories of Four Continents, in 2005.