In the earliest stages of her career, Swedish actress Britt Ekland was "famous for being famous" as the wife of film
comedian Peter Sellers. By the 1990s she had been a major star in her own right for over 3 decades.
Ekland had appeared in two Italian pictures before marrying Sellers in 1963, then co-starred
with her husband in After the Fox (1966) and The Bobo (1967). She 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 melodramas but Ekland's hardworking ethic always meant she gave 100% to the role. She won rave reviews
as James Bond's vis-a-vis in The Man With the Golden Gun (1973) and in the 1974 cult thriller, The Wicker Man.
It is
likely that Britt Ekland will be remembered for not only her cinematic triumphs; chances are future generations will also know her from her brief alliance with Peter Sellers, or from her tempestuous and well-documented private life, as recounted
in her autobiography True Britt.
-- paul page (lenin imports)
JAMES BOND
"It was one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done," says Ekland, of her comic turn as Bond's Girl Friday Mary
Goodnight in 1974's The Man with the Golden Gun. "But it did nothing for my career." Perhaps not, though the
Swedish-born actress did eventually turn up in 1989's Scandal as a decadent English socialite sporting gold-painted
nipples. "But you can get more publicity [from a Bond film] than you've ever had in your life," she says.
Actually,
Ekland (whose former beaux include Warren Beatty, Ryan O'Neal and Rod Stewart) has hardly lacked for attention. At
20 she wed actor Peter Sellers, then 37. Their five-year union produced a daughter, actress Victoria Sellers, now 36.
She also has a son, Nikolai, from her relationship with record honcho Lou Adler, now an L.A. restaurateur.
In 1980
she took up with Stray Cats drummer Jim McDonnell. (She was 38, he was 20.) Married four years later and divorced
in 1992, they have a son, Thomas Jefferson, who lives with Ekland in London and L.A.
Currently single, Ekland cut
short her stage tour in the farce Run for Your Wife because, she says, "you can't do theater with a little
child. There's a car full of dirty laundry waiting to be done."
In recent years, Britt has been a sought after actress in UK pantomine & has made regular guest appearances on UK TV.
In 1998, she hit the headlines for being mugged of her Rolex watch in a London supermarket & in 2000 she fell and injured her ankles at the heavy metal magazine, Kerrang, awards in London.
Britt also hosted a programme on BBC on the year 1971 & discussed her part in the movie of that year, Get Carter with Michael Caine.
-- People Magazine
