Belinda Lee

Green-eyed blonde bombshell Belinda Lee was born in Devon, England, to a hotel owner (Robert Esmond Lee) and florist (Stella Mary Graham) on June 15, 1935. Nicknamed Billie, she was an incredible beauty while still in her early teens attending the Rookesbury Park Prep School at Hampshire and St. Margaret's boarding school at Devon.

Expressing an avid interest in acting, she focused on dramatics at the Tudor Arts Academy at Surrey (1947), then gained entry via a scholarship to London's RADA, in which she made her stage debut in "Point of Departure". The sharp-faced Belinda was noticed by Rank Studio director Val Guest while performing at the Nottingham Playhouse.

Artificially groomed in starlet parts, the first being The Runaway Bus (1954), Guest went on and helped her obtain a movie contract with Rank while introducing her to one of Rank's prime still photographers, Cornel Lucas. That same year she married the much older Lucas, who helped promote her as a sex goddess with thousands of glamorous photographs. Initially promoted as a docile young beauty, her parts gradually grew sexier. Belinda worked intently in films but found frustration typed as a buxom peroxide blonde.

Boxed in as a second-string Diana Dors, she played a sensuous foil to Benny Hill in Who Done It? (1956) and was served up as sexy window dressing opposite both John Gregson in Miracle in Soho (1957) and Louis Jourdan in Dangerous Exile (1957). Estranged now from Lucas, Belinda headed off to Italy for a change of pace and atmosphere but only found more of the temptress roles she sought to avoid -- Aphrodite, Messalina and Lucrezia Borgia -- in low-budget spectacles. She also became preoccupied with married men, one being Prince Filippo Orsini, whose position with the Vatican led to a major scandal.

Was a good friend of actress Anna Kashfi. To save expenses, the two once shared a flat until Kashfi married Marlon Brando in 1957.

This particular turbulent romance and a dissipating relationship with the Rank Studio (her last picture for the studio was Elephant Gun (1958) with Michael Craig) triggered a near-fatal suicide attempt with pills in January of 1958. She later divorced Lucas and continued her torrid affair with Prince Orsini, and then others.

She died in a car crash while driving between Las Vegas and Los Angeles with her lover Gualtiero Jacopetti. Before he died 50 years later in August 2011, he reportedly had said he wanted to be buried next to Belinda.