Celebrity Nooz: Barbara Steele

Barbara Steele (Actress) - Black Sunday

Updated: 8/24/20

Name: Barbara Steele

Birth Name: Barbara Steele

Born: December 29, 1937 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, UK

Nickname: The Queen of All Scream Queens

Claim To Fame: Barbara Steele is a British actress and producer. She is best known for starring in Italian Gothic horror films of the 1960s, most notably in Mario Bava's Black Sunday (1960), where she played the dual role of Princess Katia and Princess Asa Vajda.

Family Life: Steele was married to American screenwriter James Poe. They were married in 1969 and divorced in 1978. They have one child, a son named Jonathan Jackson Poe, born on August 11, 1970 in Los Angeles.

Info: Steele studied art at the Chelsea Art School and in Paris at the Sorbonne.

Got sick of being typecast in horror movies.

Was semi-retired from acting, and soon took to producing projects.

Steele served as associate producer of the 1983 TV mini-series, The Winds of War, and was a producer for its 1988 sequel, War and Remembrance, for which she shared the 1989 Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama/Comedy Special with executive producer Dan Curtis.

Trivia: She was the original female lead to Elvis Presley in Flaming Star (1960). She walked off the picture after an argument with director Don Siegel.

She was reportedly the last person to be signed as a contract player by the J. Arthur Rank Organization.

Invited her friend, actress Jane Wald, to the United States during the 1960s. Upon visiting the 20th Century-Fox commissary, she was discovered by an independent producer.

Steele was slightly injured by Vincent Price while filming her last scene from Pit and the Pendulum (1961) when he quite aggressively grabbed her by her throat - she shrugged it off because the scene came off so real.

The role of Alice LeBlanc in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) was written by James Poe--her husband--specifically for her, but the part went to Susannah York instead.

Where Are They Now: It's rumored that Steele is part of the cast of the zombie movie called Z Dead End, which is currently filming.

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