Barbara Leigh-Hunt, star of Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Frenzy’, dead at 88

Posted On September 28, 2024September 28, 2024

Barbara Leigh-Hunt, the actor who starred in one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most controversial movies, Frenzy, has passed away at the age of 88.

Born in 1935, Leigh-Hunt began acting professionally in the 1950s after studying her craft at Bristol’s Old Vic theatre. This primed her for a career in the arts, and she went on to perform in many stage productions over the coming years.

Leigh-Hunt appeared in established productions as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. She was a prolific and well-respected star, with some of her notable credits including Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She performed on both the West End and Broadway.

While she began starring in film and television productions in the 1960s, she still cut her teeth in the theatre, performing in the National Theatre’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1988, for example. She made her screen debut in 1969 in an episode of the British spy show Callan before landing her role in Hitchcock’s iconic movie Frenzy.

She played the role of Brenda Blaney, who gets raped and strangled to death by Bob Rusk, portrayed by Barry Foster. He called himself the Necktie Murderer, and Hitchcock didn’t hesitate to show the event in graphic detail. The scene shocked many viewers when it was released in 1972 due to the fact that the film hardly censored what was going on. To this day, many people believe it to be one of the most violent movies Hitchcock ever made.

It was Hitchcock’s penultimate film, but for Leigh-Hunt, her on-screen career was just getting started. She then appeared in Henry VIII and His Six Wives as Catherine Parr, followed by Bequest to the Nation. It took her seven years to then get in front of the camera again, preferring to appear on stage.

However, she went on to star in several BBC television series in the coming decades, like Pride and Prejudice, starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, and Tumbledown. She also had roles in As Time Goes By, Wives and Daughters, Inspector Morse, Billy Elliot, and Vanity Fair. Leigh-Hunt won an Olivier Award in 1993 after starring as Sybil Birling in An Inspector Calls for the National Theatre.

The actor died “peacefully” at the age of 88 on September 16th, her family reported.

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