Barbara Bouchet

Barbara Bouchet

Bouchet at the Sonopromotion film fair, November 5, 2006,
Kerkrade, The Netherlands
Born Barbara Gutscher
15 August 1943
Reichenberg, Sudetenland, Germany (present day Liberec, Czech Republic)
Years active 1959–present
Spouse(s) Luigi Borghese (m. 1974–2006) (separated; 2 sons)

Barbara Bouchet (born Barbara Gutscher on 15 August 1943) is a German-American actress and entrepreneur.

She has acted in more than 80 films and television episodes and founded a production company that has produced fitness videos and books. She also owns and operates a fitness studio. Some of her roles include Miss Moneypenny in Casino Royale, Kelinda in the episode "By Any Other Name" of the original Star Trek, as Patrizia in Non si sevizia un paperino and as Mrs. Schermerhorn in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York.

Early life

Barbara Gutscher was born the oldest of 4 siblings, two boys and two girls in Reichenberg, in the Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia that was officially ceded to Germany as part of the 1938 Munich Agreement and today part of the Czech Republic.[1]

After World War II, the Gutscher family was placed, along with many others, in a resettlement camp in the American occupation zone in Germany, from where they were, in time, able to apply for, and be granted, permission to emigrate to the United States, under the humanitarian provisions of the Displaced Persons Act that had been legislated by Congress in 1948.[2]

After arriving in America, the Gutschers lived in Five Points, California on the west side of the Central Valley and eventually settled in San Francisco, where young Barbara was raised. She attended Galileo High School, at the corner between Russian Hill and the Marina District in San Francisco.

As a prize, the station offered young Barbara the chance to become one of the "regulars" in the dance group of the show, who were called The KPIX Dance Party.[3] These were teenage dancers who danced live to the hit songs of the day and became locally famous in their own right by being on television six days per week. Barbara was on the show from 1959 until 1962, when she moved to Hollywood to get into the film industry, changing her Germanic sounding surname to the French sounding Barbara Bouchet.

Career

Bouchet began her career modeling for magazine covers and appearing in television commercials, before eventually becoming an actress. Her first acting role was a minor part in What a Way to Go! (1964), which led to a series of other roles in the 1960s. She appeared in the films John Goldfarb, Please Come Home (1964), In Harm's Way (1964), and Agent for H.A.R.M. (1966).

She appeared in semi-clad pictorials in two editions of Playboy magazine: May 1965 (stills from In Harm's Way) and February 1967 ("The Girls of Casino Royale").[4]

In Casino Royale (1967), she played the role of Miss Moneypenny. Her early films gave her the grounding in character development that she needed in order to tackle more substantial roles later in her career. In 1968, she guest-starred in the Star Trek episode "By Any Other Name", and in 1969 appeared in the musical film Sweet Charity playing Ursula.

After growing tired of being typecast and being unable to get starring roles in Hollywood, she moved to Italy in 1970 and began acting in Italian films, such as Black Belly of the Tarantula and Sex with a Smile (40 gradi all'ombra del lenzuolo, 1975).

She starred with Gregory Peck in The Scarlet and The Black in 1983, a successful World War II rescue movie made for TV. In 1985, she established a production company and started to produce a successful series of fitness books and videos. In addition, she opened a fitness studio in Rome.

In 2002, she returned to American cinema, appearing in Gangs of New York, playing Mrs. Schermerhorn.

Personal life

In 1974, Barbara Bouchet married Luigi Borghese, a producer, with whom she has two sons: Alessandro (b. 1976), a TV chef and Massimiliano (b. 1989), a bartender. Her husband subsequently produced some of her later films. She separated from her husband in 2006, citing different aspirations.[5]

Filmography

Films

Television

References

  1. ↑ "Barbara Bouchet". Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen. Retrieved December 12, 2014.
  2. ↑ A Terrible Revenge, DeZayas, Alfred Maurice, Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 1-4039-7308-3, 2nd edition, 2006
  3. ↑ Interiano, Manny. "KPIX Dance Party". Archived from the original on 5 June 2007. Retrieved 2007-07-16.
  4. ↑ "Playboy Magazine February 1967 vol.14, no.2". Vintage Playboy Mags. Retrieved December 12, 2014.
  5. ↑ Boccalini, Siria. "Intervista a Barbara Bouchet" (in Italian). Archived from the original on 17 August 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-01.

External links

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