British actress Samantha Eggar, whose captivating performance in the 1965 psychological thriller The Collector earned her an Academy Award nomination and launched a decades-long career spanning film, television, and voice work, died Wednesday, October 15, 2025, at her home in Sherman Oaks, California. She was 86.
Her daughter, actress Jenna Stern, announced the death on social media on October 17, revealing that Eggar passed away surrounded by family. “My Mama passed on Wednesday evening. Peacefully and quietly surrounded by family,” Stern wrote. “I was there next to her… holding her hand, telling her how much she was loved. It was beautiful. It was a privilege.” No cause of death was provided, though Stern indicated her mother had struggled with illness over the past five years while still living what she described as a long, fabulous life.
Born Victoria Louise Samantha Marie Elizabeth Therese Eggar on March 5, 1939, in Hampstead, London, the actress grew up in the Buckinghamshire countryside during World War II. Her father, Ralph, served as a Brigadier in the British Army, while her mother, Muriel, worked as an ambulance driver during the war. Eggar spent 12 years in a convent, where exposure to plays, concerts, and poetry cultivated her love of the arts, leading her to joke that she seemed destined to become either an actor or a nun.
Despite earning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Eggar’s mother refused to allow her attendance, horrified at the prospect of her daughter pursuing an acting career. Instead, she entered art school to study painting and drawing, and later worked as a fashion artist after graduation. Her path to acting came through persistence, when her cousin drove her to the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and encouraged her to audition. She recalled him telling her to perform pieces she had prepared, including her own version of Ophelia and poems she had learned. The academy accepted her, marking the beginning of her professional journey.
Eggar’s breakthrough arrived with The Collector, William Wyler’s adaptation of John Fowles’ novel, in which she portrayed Miranda Grey, an art student kidnapped and held captive by a lonely psychotic played by Terence Stamp. At just 25 years old, she delivered a performance that earned her the best actress prize at Cannes, a Golden Globe Award, and an Oscar nomination, though she ultimately lost to Julie Christie for Darling. The filming process proved grueling, as Eggar recalled in a 2014 interview. According to a New York Times review, “She was beautiful, intelligent, and tough enough to be fascinatingly vulnerable.”
The success of The Collector propelled Eggar into a remarkable five-year run of prominent roles. In 1966, she starred opposite Cary Grant in his final film appearance, the romantic comedy Walk, Don’t Run, set during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. The following year brought her role as Emma Fairfax, Rex Harrison’s love interest in the original Doctor Dolittle film, where she showcased her singing abilities alongside her acting talent.
Throughout the 1970s, Eggar balanced motherhood with her acting career, appearing in Martin Ritt’s 1970 historical drama The Molly Maguires alongside Sean Connery and Richard Harris, as well as the British film The Walking Stick, in which she portrayed a woman psychologically scarred after childhood polio. She carved out a particular niche in horror films, appearing in The Dead Are Alive! in 1972, A Name for Evil in 1973, The Uncanny in 1977, and Curtains in 1983.
Her most memorable horror role came in David Cronenberg’s 1979 film The Brood, where she played Nola Carveth, a deranged mental patient whose radical psychotherapy treatment results in her spawning devilish offspring. Eggar expressed fascination with Cronenberg’s multilayered concept and robust writing, which she compared to Shakespeare. The director later acknowledged The Brood as his most autobiographical film, created during a bitter custody battle with his first wife.
On television, Eggar starred opposite Yul Brynner in a 1972 CBS adaptation of The King and I and took on Barbara Stanwyck’s iconic role of Phyllis Dietrichson in a 1973 ABC remake of Double Indemnity. She appeared in numerous series throughout the decades, including guest spots on Hawaii Five-0, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, and Star Trek: The Next Generation, where she played Captain Picard’s sister-in-law, Marie Picard, in 1990.
In the 1990s, Eggar found new success in voice work, most notably voicing Hera, queen of the gods, in Disney’s 1997 animated feature Hercules, a role she reprised for the spinoff television series and video game. She also voiced Queen Guinevere on the Family Channel’s animated series The Legend of Prince Valiant. Her final performance came in 2012, voicing a character named Whale in two episodes of the Adult Swim series Metalocalypse. That role marked the culmination of a career spanning more than five decades.
Beyond her professional achievements, Eggar served as a lector and lay minister at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills and at Saint Francis de Sales Parish in Sherman Oaks, where she led weekly meditations until the pandemic. Her family noted her profound love for animals, from Great Danes to Dalmatians and bulldogs, whose leashes still hung in her home long after their passing.
Eggar was married to American actor Tom Stern from 1964 to 1971. Stern died in 2024. She is survived by her daughter Jenna Stern and husband Brennan, producer son Nicolas Stern and wife Mindy, three grandchildren Isabel, Charlie, and Calla, and three sisters Margaret Barron, Toni Maricic, and Vivien Thursby. The family requested donations in her memory be made to The Cousteau Society, the World Wildlife Fund, the ALS Association, the National Kidney Foundation, and the British Olympic Association.
