Ingrid Pitt (born Ingoushka Petrov; 21 November 1937 – 23 November 2010) was a Polish-British actress and writer best known for her work in horror films of the 1970s.
Early life
Ingoushka Petrov was born in Warsaw, Poland, one of two daughters of a father of German Jewish descent and a Polish Jewish mother. During World War II, she and her mother were imprisoned in Stutthof concentration camp in Sztutowo, Free City of Danzig (present-day Nowy Dwór Gdański County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland) but escaped. In Berlin, in the 1950s, Ingoushka married an American soldier, Laud Roland Pitt Jr., and moved to California. After her marriage failed she returned to Europe, but after a small role in a film, she took the shortened stage name "Ingrid Pitt", keeping her former husband's surname, and headed to Hollywood, where she worked as a waitress while trying to make a career in films.