(written from a Production point of view)
Barbara Bouchet (born 15 August 1943; age 80) is an actress who played Kelinda in the Star Trek: The Original Series second season episode "By Any Other Name". She filmed her scenes between Friday 10 November 1967 and Wednesday 15 November 1967 and on Friday 17 November 1967 at Desilu Stage 9 and Stage 10.
Born Bärbel Gutscher in 1943 in Reichenberg, Germany (a part of the Sudetenland, which had been part of Czechoslovakia since World War I, was ceded to the German Reich in 1938 and returned to Czechoslovakia in 1945), her family was displaced by force by the Czechoslovakian authorities after the Second World War and sent to a resettlement camp in the American occupation zone in Germany. They eventually immigrated to Five Points, California when she was 5, and later settled down in San Francisco.
Her father, former German war photographer Fritz Gutscher sent Barbara's photo to the local "Miss Gidget" beauty contest in 1959, which she won, earning her a date with the male lead of the movie Gidget and future Trek alumnus, James Darren. The prize also included a screen test, which never materialized, nevertheless, Bouchet found success as a teenage model, appearing on 35 magazine covers. She also worked as a dancer in the teen-targeted music TV show The KPIX Dance Party from 1959 to 1962.
She eventually moved to Hollywood to expand into a film career. She appeared in Agent for H.A.R.M. (1966, co-starring Peter Mark Richman and directed by Gerd Oswald), and also appeared in Casino Royale with Orson Welles in the same year. She appeared in smaller roles in films like John Wayne's In Harm's Way (1965, with Stewart Moss, Hal Needham, and music by Jerry Goldsmith), John Goldfarb, Please Come Home! (1965, with Terri Garr, Carey Foster, James Gruzal, Billy Curtis, Irene Tsu, Lou Elias, and Glenn R. Wilder), and the musical Sweet Charity (1969, with Ricardo Montalban and Joseph Mell).
She also guested in a handful of television series, including Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (with Charles Dierkop and Michael Barrier), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (with Sharyn Hillyer and David Armstrong), and The Virginian (with Willard Sage). She posed semi-nude for two issues of Playboy magazine, in May 1965 and February 1967.
Since the seventies, she has been living in Rome, Italy, where she has become a celebrity by starring in B-movies. Her almost fifty Italian movie credits include Don't Torture a Duckling (1972), The French Sex Murders (1972), The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972), Ricco the Mean Machine (1973), Cry of a Prostitute (1974), Duck in Orange Sauce (1975), Death Rage (1976), and The Hook (1976).
In October 1983, Bouchet posed nude for the Italian edition of Penthouse magazine, at the age of 40. In 1985, she started her own production company, opened her own health club in Rome, and launched her own line of fitness books and videos.
In 2002, she briefly returned to English-language cinema with a supporting role in Martin Scorsese's period crime drama Gangs of New York, which was partly filmed in Italy.
Between 1974 and 2006, Bouchet was married to film producer Luigi Borghese who produced some of her later films. She has two sons, Alessandro, a TV chef and Massimiliano, a bartender.
Further reading[]
- "Light Years from Andromeda", Mark Phillips, Starlog, issue 141, April 1989, p. 34