Hilary Heath

British 60s leading lady and latterly producer, born Hilary Dwyer in Liverpool, the daughter of an orthopaedic surgeon. She studied ballet and piano as a child and in her teens embarked on an acting career on the repertory stage. On screen from 1965, she became best known for three horror films made for American International Pictures, all starring Vincent Price: Witchfinder General (1968) (as Price’s mistress), The Oblong Box (1969) (as his fiancée) and Cry of the Banshee (1970) (as his daughter). In the course of their work together, Price and Dwyer formed a close personal friendship. Arguably the best of the trio was Witchfinder General, an early example of grindhouse. Though controversial at the time because of its excessive onscreen elements of torture and sadism, it pulled $ 1.5 million at the box office and over the years became a cult classic. Peter Hutchings, in his book Hammer and Beyond, described Dwyer’s performance as “articulate and sensitive”.

Dwyer also appeared opposite George Sanders in a little-known science fiction release, The Body Stealers (1969) (an inferior attempt at reworking Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)) and in an unsuccessful remake of Wuthering Heights (1970) (again for AIP), as Isabella Linton. On the small screen, she was glimpsed as an ill-fated fellow resident of ‘the village’ in an episode of The Prisoner (1967), portrayed a thief purloining secret documents in Special Branch (1969) and expired at the hands of a murderous spectre in Space: 1999 (1975) (her screen acting swansong). She also had a leading role in the TV series Hadleigh (1969) as the independently wealthy middle-class wife of a suave Yorkshire country squire. On the stage, she acted at the Theatre Royal in Bath and (in The Importance of Being Earnest) at the Bristol Old Vic.

In 1973, she married the talent agent Duncan Heath. The following year they set up Duncan Heath Associates Agency, eventually sold to ICM Partners in 1984. Abandoning her acting career in 1976, Hilary Heath became an executive producer, primarily of episodic TV as well as adaptations of literary classics by Daphne Du Maurier (Frenchman’s Creek (1998), Jamaica Inn (2014)) and Tennessee Williams (The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003)). Fast forward to 2004 and Hilary attracted unhappier news headlines after being confronted by a knife-wielding assailant at her Barbados home and forced to jump from a second storey bedroom window onto rocks, sustaining injuries hospitalising her for nine days. She retired from screen work in 2014 and passed away on April 10 2020 at the age of 74 as a result of complications from coronavirus .