Catherine Spaak

Sultry isn't strong enough a word for Catherine Spaak, a French-born free spirit who, despite having a name that sounds like it could be of Vulcan origin, was one of the most sensual and revelatory screen sirens of 1960s Italian cinema. As a teenager, she was introduced to a circle of European filmmakers through her screenwriter father, Charles, permitting the young newcomer to take on a flux of wholly feminine and uncommonly complex roles in such films as the romantically probing "Crazy Desire" and the stately, picturesque road movie "The Easy Life" ('62). With the sublime "La Calda Vita," a film which used the frivolous trappings of the beach-movie genre as a means to explore deeper issues about growing up, she made a transition into a busy adulthood marked by increasingly frequent ventures into American cinema. Unfortunately, Hollywood films such as "Hotel" ('67), an ensemble drama of clock-like predetermination, did little more than present Spaak as a run-of-the-mill ingenue. She's fared considerably better returning to Italian auteurs such as Dario Argento, who cast her as everything from duplicitous doctors to brazen freedom fighters in movies such as his 1971 animalistic giallo, "The Cat o' Nine Tails." Also a singer, Spaak has continued to perform in concert halls and on international screens well into the early 2000s. Catherine Spaak died on April 17, 2022 in Rome, Italy at the age of 77.