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Ingrid Pitt (born Ingoushka Petrov; 21 November 193723 November 2010) was a Polish-British actress and writer, best known for her work in British horror cinema of the 1970s.
During World War II, she and her mother were imprisoned in Stutthof concentration camp in Sztutowo, Free City of Danzig (present-day Nowy Dwór Gdański County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland) but escaped.
In Berlin, in the 1950s, Ingoushka married an American soldier, Laud Roland Pitt Jr., and moved to California. After her marriage ended she returned to Europe where she took a small role in a film and adopted the stage name "Ingrid Pitt". She headed to Hollywood where she worked as a waitress while trying to make a career in films.
Pitt appeared as Queen Galleia of Atlantis in The Time Monster, which was the fifth serial of the ninth season of Doctor Who, broadcast in six weekly parts, from 20 May through 24 June 1972. She returned to Doctor Who as Dr. Solow in Warriors of the Deep, which was the first serial of the 21st season of the series, broadcast in four twice-weekly parts from 5 to 13 January 1984. Pitt also appears in the second broadcast episode of the short-lived cult ITC series The Zoo Gang, "Mindless Murder" (12 April 1974).
Her work with Hammer Film Productions elevated her to cult figure status. She starred as Carmilla/Mircalla in The Vampire Lovers (1970), based on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's novella Carmilla, and played the title role in Countess Dracula (1971), based on the legends about Countess Elizabeth Báthory. Pitt also appeared in the Amicus horror anthology film The House That Dripped Blood (1971) and had a small part in The Wicker Man (1973).
In the mid-1970s, she appeared on the judging panel of the British ITV Network talent show New Faces.
During the 1980s, Pitt returned to mainstream films and television. In the 1981 BBC Playhouse production, Unity, her character Fraulein Baum, who is denounced as a Jew by Unity Mitford (Lesley-Anne Down), was close to her real-life experience. Her popularity with horror film buffs kept her in demand for guest appearances at horror conventions and film festivals. Other films in which Pitt has appeared outside the horror genre are: Who Dares Wins (1982) (or The Final Option), Wild Geese II (1985) and Hanna's War (1988). Generally cast as a villainess, her characters often died horribly at the end of the final reel. "Being the anti-hero is great – they are always roles you can get your teeth into."
At this time, the theatre world also beckoned. Pitt founded her own theatrical touring company and starred in successful stage productions of Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 classic, Dial M for Murder, Duty Free (or Don't Bother to Dress), and Woman of Straw. She also appeared in many television series in the United Kingdom and the United States; among them Ironside, Dundee and the Culhane and Smiley's People.
In 1998, Pitt narrated Cradle of Filth's album Cruelty and the Beast as the character Countess Elizabeth Báthory, whom she had portrayed in the film Countess Dracula.
In 2000, Pitt made her return to the big screen in The Asylum, starring Colin Baker and Patrick Mower and directed by John Stewart. In 2003, Pitt voiced the role of Lady Violator in Renga Media's production Dominator. The film was the United Kingdom's first computer-generated imagery animated film.
After a period of illness, Pitt returned to the screen for the Hammer Films-Mario Bava tribute Sea of Dust (2008).
Pitt was also supposed to have a cameo role in Beyond the Rave (2008) as the unnamed mother of the drug dealer character Tooley played by Steve Sweeney. This horror serial, which marked the return of Hammer Films was posted on the website MySpace had Pitt's cameo scene filmed for episode 3 but it was omitted in the final cut. Despite this, Pitt was mistakenly listed in the credits for the episode as "Tooley's mum" as if she was still in it. The scene is included as an extra on the DVD.
This was followed in 1984 by a novelisation of the Perón era in Argentina ( The Perons), where she lived for a number of years: "Argentina was a wild frontier country ruled by a berserk military dictatorship at the time. It just suited my mood."
In 1984, Pitt and her husband Tony Rudlin were commissioned to script a Doctor Who adventure. The story, entitled The Macro Men, was one of a number of ideas submitted by the couple after she appeared in the season 21 story arc Warriors of the Deep (1984). The plot concerned events surrounding the Philadelphia Experiment—the urban legend about a U.S. Navy experiment during World War II to try to make the destroyer escort invisible to radar. Pitt and Rudlin had read it in The Philadelphia Experiment – Project Invisibility (1979) by paranormal writer Charles Berlitz, grandson of the founder of the Berlitz language schools. It involved the Doctor (Colin Baker) and companion Peri (Nicola Bryant) arriving on board the ship in 1943 in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and becoming involved in a battle against microscopic humanoid creatures native to Earth, but previously unknown to humankind. The couple had several meetings with script editor Eric Saward and carried out numerous revisions, but the story progressed no further than the preparation of a draft first-episode script under the new title "The Macros". The story was released in June 2010 by Big Finish Productions as "The Macros" in their audios, five months before Pitt's death.
In 1999, her autobiography, Life's a Scream (Heinemann) was published, and she was short-listed for the Talkies Awards for her own reading of extracts from the audio book, I Hate Being Second.
The autobiography detailed the harrowing experiences of her early life—in a Nazi concentration camp, her search through Europe in Red Cross for her father, and her escape from East Berlin, one step ahead of the Volkspolizei. "I always had a big mouth and used to go on about the political schooling interrupting my quest for thespian glory. I used to think like that. Not good in a police state."
The Ingrid Pitt Bedside Companion for Ghosthunters (2003) was Pitt's tenth book. It was preceded by The Ingrid Pitt Bedside Companion for Vampire Lovers (1998) and The Ingrid Pitt Book of Murder, Torture & Depravity (2000).
Pitt's credentials for writing about ghosts spring from a time when she lived with a tribe of Indians in Colorado. Sitting with her baby daughter, Steffanie, by a log fire, she was sure that she could see the face of her father smiling at her in the flames. "I told one of the others and he went all Hollywood Injun on me and said something like 'Heap good medicine'. I guess he was taking the mickey."
Other writing projects include a different look at Hammer Films entitled The Hammer Xperience. She also wrote a story under the pen name, Dracula Smith, which was illustrated within the fan club magazine.
Pitt wrote regular columns for various magazines and periodicals, including Shivers, TV & Film Memorabilia and Motoring and Leisure. She also wrote a regular column, often about politics, on her official website, as well as a weekly column at UK website Den of Geek. In 2008, she was added to the merchandising of Monster-Mania: The Magazine.
In 2011, Avalard Publishing acquired the rights to Cuckoo Run (1980) and a number of other previously unpublished titles, including Annul Domini: The Jesus Factor (March 2012), a speculative novel about what would have happened if Jesus had never made it to Jerusalem.
Pitt's original novel Dracula Who...? was released in a limited edition by Avalard in October 2012 alongside the script for the unproduced film version. Dracula Who...? had the return of Countess Dracula, a role Ingrid had played on screen for Hammer Films.
She had a passion for World War II aircraft. After revealing this on a radio programme, she was invited by the museum at RAF Duxford to have a flight in a Avro Lancaster bomber. She held a student's pilot licence and a black belt in karate.
| + Film | |||
| 1965 | Doctor Zhivago | Uncredited | |
| Chimes at Midnight | |||
| 1966 | Un beso en el puerto | Dorothy | |
| Sound of Horror | Sofia Minelli | ||
| A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum | Courtesan | Uncredited | |
| 1968 | Where Eagles Dare | Heidi | |
| The Omegans | Linda | ||
| 1970 | The Vampire Lovers | Marcilla / Carmilla / Mircalla Karnstein | |
| 1971 | Countess Dracula | Countess Elisabeth Nádasdy | |
| The House That Dripped Blood | Carla Lind | (segment: "The Cloak") | |
| 1972 | Nobody Ordered Love | Alice Allison | Lost film |
| 1973 | The Wicker Man | Librarian | |
| 1982 | Who Dares Wins | Helga | |
| 1983 | Octopussy | Gallery Mistress | Voice; uncredited |
| 1985 | Wild Geese II | Hooker | |
| Underworld | Pepperdine | ||
| 1986 | Parker | Widow | |
| 1988 | Hanna's War | Margit | |
| 2000 | Green Fingers | Mrs. Bowen | Short film |
| The Asylum | Isobella | ||
| 2003 | Dominator | Lady Violator | Voice |
| 2006 | Minotaur | The Sybil | |
| 2008 | Beyond the Rave | Tooley's Mum | Direct-to-video |
| Sea of Dust | Anna |
| + Television | |||
| 1967 | Dundee and the Culhane | Tallie Montreaux | Episode: "The 1000 Feet Deep Brief" |
| Ironside | Irene Novas | Episode: "The Fourteenth Runner" | |
| 1972 | Jason King | Nadine | Episode "Nadine" |
| 1972, 1984 | Doctor Who | Galleia/Dr. Solow | Serials: The Time Monster, Warriors of the Deep |
| 1973 | The Adventurer | Elayna | Episode: "Double Exposure" |
| 1974 | The Zoo Gang | Lyn Martin | Episode: "Mindless Murder" |
| 1975 | Thriller | Ilse | Episode: "Where the Action Is" |
| 1981 | BBC2 Playhouse | Fraulein Baum | Episode: "Unity" |
| Artemis 81 | Hitchcock Blonde | Television film | |
| 1982 | Smiley's People | Elvira | Miniseries, 2 episodes |
| 1983 | The Comedy of Errors | Courtesan | Television film |
| 1984 | The House | Countess Von Eisen | |
| 1987 | Bulman | Laura | Episode: "Chicken of the Baskervilles" |
| + Writer | ||
| 2011 | Ingrid Pitt: Beyond the Forest | Short film; released in 2011, (final film role) |
Ingrid Pitt has no known recorded discography, though she was tributed in a song by British metal band, Cradle Of Filth.
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