Belinda Lee

About Belinda Lee

Who is it?: Actress
Birth Day: June 15, 1935
Birth Place:  Budleigh Salterton, Devon, England, United Kingdom
Died On: 12 March 1961(1961-03-12) (aged 25)\nSan Bernardino, California, US
Birth Sign: Cancer
Occupation: Actress
Years active: 1954–1961
Spouse(s): Cornel Lucas (1954–1959)

Belinda Lee Net Worth

Belinda Lee was born on June 15, 1935 in  Budleigh Salterton, Devon, England, United Kingdom, is Actress. 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 at 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 lowbudget spectacles. She also became preoccupied with married men, one being Prince Filippo Orsini, whose position with the Vatican led to a major scandal. This particular turbulent romance and a dissipating relationship with the Rank Studio (her last picture for the studio was Nor the Moon by Night (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.It all ended much too soon for the 26-year-old when she decided to join her current love, the much older Italian playboy/journalist/film producer Gualtiero Jacopetti, on a trip to Las Vegas where he was working on a documentary (Mondo cane (1962) ["The Woman in the World"]. While she, Jacopetti and co-producer Paolo Cavara were auto passengers on their way to Los Angeles from Vegas, their driver lost control of the speeding car and flipped. The 25-year-old actress was thrown from the car and died of a fractured skull and broken neck. The other three escaped with fairly minor injuries. Cremated in the States, her ashes were eventually returned to Rome and placed in the Campo Cestio Cemetary.
Belinda Lee is a member of Actress

💰 Net worth: Under Review

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Biography/Timeline

1950

A profile for the British Film Institute said "of all the Rank Organisation's starlets, Belinda Lee stands out as the most notorious, yet paradoxically anonymous, British Actress of the 1950s."

1954

She was married to the Photographer Cornel Lucas from 1954 until 1959.

1956

Rank finally gave Lee a good chance, casting her as a nurse in a medical drama The Feminine Touch (1956). She followed this with a crime drama The Secret Place (1957) and Miracle in Soho (1957), the latter written by Emeric Pressburger. She was an aristocrat helping Louis Jourdan in Dangerous Exile (1957), during the filming of which she was injured when her hair caught fire.

1957

She returned to Rank to make Nor the Moon by Night (1957) which was shot on location in South Africa. During filming, Lee left to go to Italy to visit her married lover. Italian newspapers reported that Lee had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Three days later, papal Prince Filippo Orsini, who had been linked to her by the papers, was reported to have been hospitalised after slashing his wrists. Police refused to comment on the newspaper reports linking the two romantically. Orsini, whose injuries were light, refused to tell the police why he had done it. Lee said that she had been suffering from insomnia and had taken an overdose by mistake. Both were married to others at the time. The Vatican said that Orsini would lose his title if it were proven that he had attempted suicide, and indeed the Pope did remove Orsini and the Orsini family from their hereditary title of Prince Assistant to the Papal Throne.

1959

In Italy, Lee starred in The Magliari (1959), directed by Francesco Rosi. She went to Germany for Love Now, Pay Later (1959) and France for Les Dragueurs (1959) and Marie of the Isles (1959). In Italy she did Long Night in 1943 (1960) and played the title role in Messalina (1960) and Cornel Wilde's love interest in Constantine and the Cross (1961). Her last film was the Biblical epic The Story of Joseph and His Brethren (1961).

1961

In 1961, Belinda Lee died in a car accident near San Bernardino, California, on her way to Los Angeles from Las Vegas, where she had been acting in a film. Her ashes are kept at Campo Cestio Cemetery (Cimitero acattolico) in Rome, Italy.

1963

The 1963 semi-documentary Italian film The Women of the World was dedicated to Lee (who had died two years previously), with a written announcement at the start of the film (which interrupts the title music): To Belinda Lee, who throughout this long journey accompanied and helped us with love.