{"id":208364,"date":"2025-10-18T07:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T07:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/208364\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T07:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T07:48:09","slug":"star-of-doctor-dolittle-the-brood-was-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/208364\/","title":{"rendered":"Star of ‘Doctor Dolittle,’ ‘The Brood’ Was 86"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEnglish-born Samantha Eggar, who was Oscar nominated \u2014 and received the Golden Globe and the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival \u2014 for her performance in thriller \u201cThe Collector<\/a>\u201d before starring in \u201cDoctor Dolittle\u201d and later David Cronenberg\u2019s early horror masterpiece \u201cThe Brood<\/a>,\u201d died Wednesday in Los Angeles. She was 86.<\/p>\n

\n\tHer daughter, actress Jenna Stern, posted on Instagram<\/a>, \u201cMy Mama passed Wednesday evening. Peacefully and quietly surrounded by family. I was there next to her \u2026holding her hand, telling her how much she was loved. It was beautiful. It was a privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe struggled with \u201ca long illness\u201d before her death, her family told TMZ.<\/p>\n

\n\tNominated for three Oscars, including best director and adapted screenplay, William Wyler\u2019s chilling 1965 thriller \u201cThe Collector,\u201d in which an odd fellow played by Terence Stamp holds Samantha Eggar\u2019s character captive, gave an early boost to her career.<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the next year she starred with Cary Grant in his last picture, Columbia romantic comedy \u201cWalk Don\u2019t Run,\u201d in which Grant\u2019s character plays matchmaker between a U.S. athlete (Jim Hutton) competing at the Tokyo Olympics and the young gal (Eggar) from whom he is renting a room. Variety said, \u201cFine scripting, direction and performances \u2014 including a successful pace change for Samantha Eggar \u2014 invest the Columbia release with box office legs both strong and long.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe success of that film led to her casting in the high-budget \u201cDoctor Dolittle,\u201d starring as Emma Fairfax, love interest to the good doctor as played by Rex Harrison. (\u201cDolittle,\u201d of course, was remade decades later with Eddie Murphy.)<\/p>\n

\n\tShe was the female lead in Martin Ritt\u2019s 1970 coal miner film \u201cThe Molly Maguires,\u201d starring Sean Connery and Richard Harris.\u00a0Both \u201cDoctor Dolittle\u201d and \u201cThe Molly Maguires\u201d offered the actress the opportunity to show off her singing.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1970 she also gave a strong performance in the British film \u201cThe Walking Stick\u201d as a woman who had polio as a child and has been left psychologically scarred and starred opposite Oliver Reed in Hollywood golden-age director Anatole Litvak\u2019s last film, \u201cThe Lady in the Glasses With a Gun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThough Eggar did a lot of television and a variety of movies over the years, she returned to the genre that gave the actress her start in David Cronenberg\u2019s 1979 body horror classic \u201cThe Brood.\u201d In critic Fernando F. Croce\u2019s ecstatically impressionistic review, he muses, \u201cAbove all, Eggar\u2019s bravura matriarch \u2018in the middle of a strange adventure,\u2019 her gaze quivering defiantly as she lifts her robes to reveal a literally wandering womb, one of Cronenberg\u2019s most unforgettable visions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith her crisp English accent, she began doing voice work in the early \u201990s, most notably in Disney\u2019s 1997 animated feature \u201cHercules,\u201d in which she voiced queen of the gods Hera as part of a cast that also included Tate Donovan, James Woods; she reprised the role on the ABC series spun off from the movie.<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier she had voiced Queen Guinevere on the Family Channel animated series \u201cThe Legend of Prince Valiant.\u201d She also did voicework for videogames and, most recently, for the Adult Swim series \u201cMetalocalypse.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe tried series-regular television for the first time in 1972, starring opposite Yul Brynner in a CBS adaptation of \u201cAnna and the King\u201d whose run was brief. After Bernard Girard\u2019s horror film \u201cA Name for Evil\u201d the following year, she focused on a series of TV movies, including a remake of \u201cDouble Indemnity\u201d in which she starred in the Barbara Stanwyck role, before returning to the bigscreen in the role of Dr. Watson\u2019s wife in Herbert Ross\u2019 Sherlock Holmes-meets-Sigmund Freud period adventure \u201cThe Seven Per-Cent Solution,\u201d based on the novel by Nicholas Meyer.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe appeared in the feline-themed horror film \u201cThe Uncanny\u201d in 1977 before appearing in Cronenberg\u2019s \u201cThe Brood\u201d in 1979. She was the female lead in the brutal revenge film \u201cThe Exterminator\u201d in 1980. The actress was firmly ensconced in the horror genre for a time, appearing in \u201cDemonoid: Messenger of Death\u201d and 1983\u2019s \u201cCurtains\u201d while guesting regularly on TV shows such as \u201cHawaii Five-O,\u201d \u201cFantasy Island,\u201d \u201cThe Love Boat\u201d and \u201cFalcon Crest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1990 she guested on \u201cStar Trek: The Next Generation\u201d as Captain Picard\u2019s sister-in-law, Marie Picard. On Geena Davis vehicle \u201cCommander in Chief,\u201d which ran in the 2005-06 season, Eggar recurred as Sarah Templeton, wife of Speaker of the House Nathan Templeton, played by Donald Sutherland.<\/p>\n

\n\tVictoria Louise Samantha Marie Elizabeth Therese Eggar was born in Hampstead, London. She began as an actress working with several Shakespearean companies.<\/p>\n

\n\tEggar made her feature debut in 1962\u2019s \u201cYoung and Willing,\u201d in which English college students get into sexual and other kinds of misadventures and also counted John Hurt, Ian McShane and Jeremy Brett in its cast. Next was a rather mediocre entry in Rank\u2019s hospital-set \u201cDoctor\u201d franchise starring Dirk Bogarde and the period crime drama \u201cDr. Crippen,\u201d starring Donald Pleasence as a doctor who may have poisoned his wife; Eggar was third-billed in both of these 1963 films.<\/p>\n

\n\tMore impressive was director Alexander Singer\u2019s \u201cPsyche 59,\u201d a story of hysterical blindness that starred Curd Jurgens, Patricia Neal and Eggar as the hub of the sexual-tension wheel. In addition to \u201cThe Collector,\u201d which sparked her career, Eggar made another film that was released in 1965: J. Lee Thompson\u2019s noirish melodrama \u201cReturn From the Ashes,\u201d in which she played the lover of a chess-playing rogue portrayed by Maximilian Schell and the daughter of a female doctor (Ingrid Thulin) who survived the Nazi camps. I<\/p>\n

\n\tEggar was married to actor Tom Stern from 1964-71.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe is survived by a daughter, actress Jenna Stern, and a son, film producer Nicolas Stern.<\/p>\n