Yvette Mimieux

Yvette Carmen Mimieux (born January 8, 1942) is a retired American television and film actress. She was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards during her acting career.

Early life and career

Yvette Carmen Mimieux was born in Los Angeles County, California, United States, to father René Mimieux and mother Maria Montemayor. She has at least two siblings: sister Gloria and a brother.

Talent manager Jim Byron suggested she become an actress.

Her first acting appearances were in episodes of the TV shows Yancy Derringer and One Step Beyond.

MGM

Mimieux's first feature was George Pal's film version of H. G. Wells's 1895 novel The Time Machine (1960) starring Rod Taylor, in which she played the character Weena. It was made for MGM, which put her under long-term contract.

She appeared in Platinum High School (1960), produced by Albert Zugsmith for MGM, which was released before The Time Machine.

She guest-starred in an episode of Mr Lucky, then was one of several leads in the highly popular teen comedy Where the Boys Are (1960).

MGM put Mimieux in the ingenue role in Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1961), an expensive flop. Arthur Freed wanted to team her and George Hamilton in a remake of The Clock, but it was not made.

She had a central role in Light in the Piazza (1962) with Olivia de Havilland and George Hamilton, playing a mentally disabled girl. The film lost money but was well regarded critically. "I suppose I have a soulful quality," she later said. "I was often cast as a wounded person, the 'sensitive' role."

She was meant to do A Summer Affair at MGM, but it was not made.

She had a small part in Pal's The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1963), another commercial disappointment. Also later that year, she appeared in Diamond Head (1963) for Columbia, billed second to Charlton Heston.

She went to United Artists for Toys in the Attic, based on the play by Lillian Hellman and co-starring Dean Martin.

While at MGM, Mimieux guest-starred on two episodes of Dr Kildare alongside Richard Chamberlain. She played a surfer suffering from epilepsy - a performance that was much acclaimed. In her appearance she was the first person on American television to show her navel.

Mimieux made a cameo as herself in Looking for Love (1964) starring Connie Francis and played Richard Chamberlain's love interest in Joy in the Morning (1965), a melodrama.

Post-MGM

She was in a Western with Max Von Sydow at Fox, The Reward (1965); the Disney comedy Monkeys, Go Home! (1967); and a heist film The Caper of the Golden Bulls (1967).

She did The Desperate Hours (1967) for TV and was reunited with Rod Taylor in the MGM action movie Dark of the Sun (1968). In 1968 she narrated a classical music concert at the Hollywood Bowl.

Mimieux was top-billed in Three in the Attic (1969) a hit for AIP.

She appeared in the critically acclaimed movie The Picasso Summer (1969) alongside Albert Finney.

Mimieux was the female lead in The Delta Factor (1970), an action film.

Television

She then had one of the leads in The Most Deadly Game (1970–71) a short-lived TV series from Aaron Spelling. She replaced Inger Stevens. Around this time Mimieux had a business selling Haitian products and studied archeology; she would travel several months of each year.

After making the TV movies Death Takes a Holiday (1971) and Black Noon (1971). In 1971 she sued her agent for not providing her with movie work despite taking money.

She was an air hostess in MGM's Skyjacked (1972), starring Heston and was in the Fox science-fiction film The Neptune Factor (1973).

By the early 1970s, Mimieux was unhappy with the roles offered to female actors."The women they [male screenwriters] write are all one dimensional," she said."They have no complexity in their lives. It's all surface. There's nothing to play. They're either sex objects or vanilla pudding."

Mimieux had been writing for several years prior to this film, mostly journalism and short stories. She had the idea for a story about a Pirandello-like theme, "the study of a woman, the difference between what she appears to be and what she is: appearance vs reality." Mimieux says the more she thought about the character "the more I wanted to play her. Here was the kind of nifty, multifaceted part I'd been looking for. So instead of a short story, I wrote it as a film."

She wrote a thriller which she took to producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg who submitted it to ABC as a TV movie. It aired as Hit Lady (1974).

She and was in The Legend of Valentino (1975), in which she played Rudolph Valentino's second wife, Natacha Rambova.

She was in the Canadian thriller Journey into Fear (1975) and made a pilot for a TV sitcom based on Bell, Book and Candle (1976), but it was not picked up.

Later Films

Mimieux was a falsely imprisoned woman victimized by a sadistic guard in the film Jackson County Jail (1976) with Tommy Lee Jones for New World Pictures, which was a box-office hit.

She was in some horror-oriented TV movies, Snowbeast (1977), Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978), and Disaster on the Coastliner (1979). She also did the TV movies Ransom for Alice! (1977) and Outside Chance (1978).

Later, Mimieux co-starred in the first PG-rated Walt Disney Productions feature, The Black Hole (1979). She had the lead in Circle of Power (1981).

Mimieux was in the TV movie Forbidden Love (1982) and Night Partners (1983) and guest-starred on The Love Boat and Lime Street.

She made Obsessive Love (1984), a television movie about a female stalker which she co-wrote and co-produced. "There are few enough films going these days," she said, "and there are three or four women who are offered all the good parts. Of course I could play a lot of awful parts that are too depressing to contemplate.... [Television] is s not the love affair I have with film, but television can be a playground for interesting ideas. I love wild, baroque, slightly excessive theatrical ideas, and because television needs so much material, there's a chance to get some of those odd ideas done."

She had the lead in Berrenger's (1985), a short-lived TV series and had a support role in the TV movie The Fifth Missile (1986).

Mimieux guest-starred in a TV movie Perry Mason: The Case of the Desperate Deception (1990). Her last film was Lady Boss (1992).

Mimieux retired from acting in 1992.

Personal life

She married Evan Engber on December 19, 1959, though her marriage remained secret for almost two years.

She was married to film director Stanley Donen from 1972 until their divorce in 1985. Mimieux later married Howard F. Ruby, chairman emeritus and founder of Oakwood Worldwide.

Television work

Recordings

• The Wonderful World Of The Brothers Grimm 1962 (MGM Records), as The Dancing Princess
• Baudelaire's Flowers Of Evil (Les Fleurs Du Mal) 1968 (Connoisseur Society), reading excerpts of Cyril Scott's 1909 translation with music by Ali Akbar Khan