Ingrid Pitt, who survived a Nazi concentration camp and dodged the Communist police to become one of Britain’s best-known horror stars, died on Tuesday, her daughter said. She was 73.
Steffanie Pitt said her mother collapsed while on her way to a birthday dinner due to be held in her honour over the weekend. The cause of death wasn’t known, although Steffanie Pitt said her mother had recently been in poor health. Known in Britain principally as the buxom bloodsucker in Vampire Lovers and Countess Dracula, Ingrid Pitt’s acting career very nearly wasn’t.
Born to a mother of Jewish descent, Pitt was interned in a Nazi concentration camp at the age of five. She survived the war, but was forced to flee Communist Berlin on the night of her planned stage debut, plunging into the river Spree in a bid to escape East German authorities. In a twist which easily surpassed the drama of the camp horror films in which she starred, she was rescued by an American soldier who would go on to become her husband. Her movie career was jump-started by her role in the 1968 action-adventure movie, Where Eagles Dare.
The World War II drama would eventually lead to her being taken on by Britain’s Hammer Films — home to Christopher Lee’s Dracula. She would play alongside the horror legend in 1971’s The House That Dripped Blood and 1973’s The Wicker Man. Steffanie Pitt told AP that her mother was a determined woman and that “acting was in her blood from the word ‘go.”’