Lynne Frederick
Lynne Frederick was an English actress and model. In a career spanning ten years, she made over thirty appearances in film and television productions. She often played the girl next door and performed in a range of genres, from contemporary science fiction to slasher horror, romantic dramas, classic westerns, and occasional comedies, although her greater successes were in period films and costume dramas.
In 1980, after the death of her husband, Peter Sellers, she came to national attention over the nature of his controversial will, in which she was listed as the primary beneficiary. She was publicly criticised, ridiculed and perceived as a gold digger by the press and public. Her career and reputation never recovered from the backlash and she was subsequently blacklisted by Hollywood. She lived out the remainder of her years in California, and kept a low profile until her unexpected death in 1994.
In the decades since her death, Frederick has steadily attracted a posthumous cult following for her collection of work in motion pictures and television. Some of her better-known performances include her roles in films such as Nicholas and Alexandra, The Amazing Mr. Blunden, Henry VIII and His Six Wives, and Voyage of the Damned. Other films of hers such as Vampire Circus, Phase IV, Four of the Apocalypse, A Long Return , and Schizo have all become underground hits or established a status as a cult film in their respective genres, contributing to the renewed interest in her life and career.
She was the first recipient of the award for Best New Coming Actress from the Evening Standard British Film Awards in 1973, for her performances in Henry VIII and His Six Wives and The Amazing Mr. Blunden. She is one of only eight actresses, and the youngest, to hold this title.
Early life
Frederick was born in Hillingdon, Middlesex, to Andrew Frederick and Iris C. Frederick. While she was very young, her father abandoned the family, and she was brought up by her mother and maternal grandmother, Cecilia. Lynne never knew or met her father, and had no personal relationships or connections with his side of the family. Although her mother was employed as a casting director for Thames Television, they often lived a frugal lifestyle. In her work, Iris gained a reputation for being a stern and imposing individual.Frederick was brought up in Market Harborough in Leicestershire. She occasionally faced social stigma due to her parents' divorce. She attended Notting Hill and Ealing High School in London. Her original career choice was to become a schoolteacher of physics and mathematics.
Career
1969–1974: Discovery and early roles
Frederick was discovered at the age of 15 by American actor and film director Cornel Wilde, who was a friend and colleague of her mother. Wilde had been looking for a young, unknown actress to star in his film adaptation of the best-selling post-apocalyptic science fiction novel The Death of Grass by John Christopher. Wilde first saw her when she came to work with her mother to pose for some test shots, and he immediately was smitten by her beauty, charisma, and bubbly personality. Despite her having no previous experience in theatre, films, or commercials, Wilde offered her the role without an audition.When No Blade of Grass was released, the film received mixed reviews from critics. Notwithstanding the lukewarm reception of the film, Frederick became an overnight sensation, and her career quickly took off. Represented by the talent agency Hazel Malone Management, Frederick became a teen idol among the British public in the early 1970s, and was seen as the next Hayley Mills and Olivia Hussey. She was regularly featured in newspaper articles and fashion magazines as a model and cover girl. For a spread in the September 1971 edition of British Vogue, she was photographed by Patrick Lichfield. In addition, she appeared in several television commercials for products that included Camay soap. Frederick then signed a cosmetics contract with Mennen, and became a spokesmodel for Protein 21 shampoo, starring in nationwide print and television advertising campaigns. The Daily Express declared her "The Face of 1971", hailing her as one of Britain's more promising newcomers. In it, the copy read: "She has that indefinable something. Whatever it is it all adds up to a delightful image of rare and innocent beauty...that face of Lynne Frederick will be seen in many more films…".
In 1971, she appeared in the biographical film Nicholas and Alexandra, in which she played the Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia, second eldest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II. For the film's press tour, she toured Europe with her three co-stars Ania Marson, Candace Glendenning, and Fiona Fullerton. That same year, she auditioned for the role of Alice in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but lost the role to her friend Fiona Fullerton. Frederick was also first runner-up for the role of Saint Clare of Assisi in the Franco Zeffirelli production of Brother Sun, Sister Moon, which ultimately went to Judi Bowker.
Her best-known appearance was in 1972 when she played Catherine Howard, in Henry VIII and His Six Wives. Her next role was in the 1972 family film The Amazing Mr. Blunden; in 1973, she won the Evening Standard British Film Award for Best New Actress. She continued to work in film and television projects throughout 1973 and 1974. Some of the shows in which she appeared were Wessex Tales, Follyfoot, The Generation Game, and an adaptation of The Canterville Ghost where she first met David Niven, who became a lifelong friend.
Frederick's most prominent television role came in 1974 when she appeared in three episodes of the critically acclaimed and Emmy-winning series The Pallisers. The series featured a huge cast of prominent and rising British actors, including Anthony Andrews, of whom she played the love interest.
1975–1977: Adult stardom
Frederick landed a role in the Spanish romance film A Long Return, where she played her first grown-up character. She also appeared alongside Fabio Testi in Four of the Apocalypse as well as in the adventure film Cormack of the Mounties. She returned to playing a teenaged character in the Spanish film El Vicio Y La Virtud.Frederick began 1976 with an appearance in a then controversial episode of the BBC series Play for Today, titled "The Other Woman", in which she played a sexually enigmatic girl who falls for a lesbian artist played by Jane Lapotaire. Later the same year, she delivered a critically acclaimed performance in the Oscar-nominated film Voyage of the Damned. She followed that with a leading role in a Pete Walker slasher horror film Schizo, a movie that became an underground hit in the horror film genre.
Along with Frederick's rising mainstream success as an actress, her modelling career was also taking off. Shifting her style and image to that of a more sophisticated glamour girl, Frederick emerged as a movie sex symbol of the late 1970s. Her profile expanded to Japan, and she became a frequent face in the Japanese entertainment magazine Screen. She was featured as a celebrity centrefold pin-up, and made the cover three times in the space of eighteen months. Frederick was also listed in several press and editorial publications as one of photographer Terry Fincher's muses.
By this point in her career, Frederick was earning over £4,000 per week for her film work alone. She was also being represented by A-list Hollywood agent Dennis Selinger, who represented internationally successful British actors such as Vanessa Redgrave, Michael Caine, and Sean Connery. Selinger was preparing Frederick for worldwide crossover stardom in mainstream film and television productions. In addition, Frederick had now reached the point where she no longer had to audition for roles, and she was being sent stacks of scripts and lucrative film offers.
1978–1980: Career decline and blacklisting
Following her marriage to Peter Sellers in 1977, Frederick's career stalled for over a year as Sellers forced her to turn down all the acting offers she was receiving in order to tend him through poor health, including looking after him on the sets of his films. She attempted to make a career comeback in 1978, but the year-long absence had cost Frederick her burgeoning stardom.Frederick campaigned and auditioned for several films. The role that she most desired, and spent a great deal of time lobbying for, was the leading role of Meggie Cleary in The Thorn Birds. Despite her lengthy and accomplished acting résumé, the producers selected Rachel Ward. Other roles she campaigned for included Cosette in the 1978 television adaptation of Les Misérables, and Anne Sullivan in the television remake of The Miracle Worker, neither of which she received. She made her final onscreen appearance with Sellers in the 1979 remake of The Prisoner of Zenda, which was a box-office and critical flop. Her final credit was as an executive producer on The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, Sellers' last film.
Following Sellers' death, his controversial will, the ongoing feuds with her stepchildren, and her short marriage to David Frost, Frederick became a figure of hate and ridicule in the press and other media. The Daily Mirror featured her in a list of disgraced public figures of 1980. Labelled as a "gold digger" and "professional wife", she was shunned and blacklisted from the film industry.
Personal life
Marriages
Frederick's first marriage at age 22 was to Peter Sellers. They met at a dinner party in March 1976 when she was 21 and Sellers was 50, after Frederick had finished making Schizo. Sellers initially proposed to her two days after their first meeting, but she turned him down. They courted for a year, he proposed to her again, and they eloped to Paris on 18 February 1977.Writer Stephen Bach said of their relationship: "I noticed as he rose, that not once in the long talkative afternoon had he let go of Lynne's hand, nor had she moved away. She transfused him simultaneously with calm and energy, and the hand he clung to was less a hand than a lifeline". He also added that he believed that Lynne had a unique ability to calm Sellers' manic moods; "the atmosphere was uneasy only until Lynne Frederick came into the room, exuding an aura of calm that somehow enveloped us all like an Alpine fragrance. She was only in her mid-twenties, but instantly observable as the mature center around which the household revolved, an emotional anchor that looked like a daffodil". David Niven, who was a friend to both Sellers and Frederick, had credited Peter's happiness to Lynne being a devoted and loving wife.
Their marriage declined as Sellers' health deteriorated. He forced Frederick to forfeit her growing and lucrative acting career to care for him. Sellers's biographer Ed Sikov claimed that Frederick was offered a lucrative five-month job in Moscow where she was to lead a big-budgeted television miniseries, but Sellers insisted she should turn it down so that he would not be left alone.
The tension between them increased after the box-office and critical failure of The Prisoner of Zenda, followed by negative tabloid reports of rumours of drug use, infidelity, domestic abuse, and other alleged conflicts. Despite their struggles, Frederick stood by Sellers and cared for him as his health continued to decline and he became more temperamental. Although they separated a number of times, they always came back together.
Sellers was in the process of excluding her from his will, according to a letter he wrote just before he died of a heart attack on 24 July 1980, the day before her 26th birthday. The planned changes to the will not having been finalised, she inherited almost his entire estate, worth an estimated £4.5 million, and his children received £800 each. Despite appeals from a number of Sellers's friends to make a fair settlement to the children, Frederick allegedly refused to give her stepchildren anything due to their rocky relationship with her and Peter. After Sellers's death, her stepson Michael Sellers published P.S. I Love You: An Intimate Portrait of Peter Sellers, an exposé memoir concerning his relationship with his father. In the book, he accused Frederick of being a deceitful, cunning and narcissistic fraud who only married his father for his money. He also alleged that Frederick had cheated his sisters and him out of their inheritance by intentionally manipulating their father to alter the will in her favour. These accusations led to the press vilifying and labelling her as a "gold digger".
She briefly married David Frost. Her supposed eagerness to remarry so quickly after Sellers's death caused a loss of reputation in the public eye, and was one of the major factors in her blacklisting. Before their marriage, Frederick had known Frost for several years, and they were occasional lovers in between relationships. Frederick divorced Frost after 17 months. During the course of their marriage, she suffered a miscarriage in March 1982.
In December 1982, she married U.S. cardiologist Barry Unger with whom she had her only child. Frederick and Barry divorced in 1991.