Elke Sommer, the striking blonde bombshell of German descent who was a mainstay of 1960s Hollywood comedies and espionage movies including “The Prize” and “A Shot in the Dark,” has died. She was 85.
Sommer died at home in Bel Air, in Los Angeles, on Wednesday, her stepson Sebastian Walther told the German outlet Bild. The Los Angeles Police Department told The Associated Press that it responded to the death of an 85-year-old woman on Sommer’s block Wednesday night.
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FILE - Elke Sommer poses at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York on May 28, 1980. (AP Photo/Dave Pickoff, File)
FILE - Elke Sommer poses at a bar on the German ocean liner SS Hanseatic in Hamburg on Dec. 5, 1960. (AP Photo/Peter Hillebrecht, File)
FILE - Actress Elke Sommer poses in New York on Jan. 8, 1990. (AP Photo/Marty Reichenthal, File)
FILE - Elke Sommer appears in Los Angeles on Feb. 26, 2004. (AP Photo/Rene Macura, FIle)
FILE - Elke Sommer gestures while answering reporters questions at her home in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Dec. 10, 1993. (AP Photo/Barbara Witz, File)
With expressive almond eyes and golden locks, often styled high in a beehive, Sommer worked with some of the biggest stars of the time, including Paul Newman in “The Prize,” Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther film “A Shot in the Dark,” James Garner and Dick Van Dyke in “The Art of Love,” Bob Hope in “Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!” and Dean Martin and Sharon Tate in “The Wrecking Crew.”
Sommer was born Elke Schletz in Berlin during World War II, on Nov. 5, 1940, though the family had to evacuate to the south in 1942. Her father, who died when she was 14, was a Protestant pastor.
She’d intended to study languages, but during a trip to Italy with her mother, Renata, in 1958, she caught the eye of someone in the Italian film industry who invited her to appear in her first film: “The Friend of the Jaguar.” Actor and filmmaker Vittorio De Sica noticed her too, and soon she was working nonstop throughout Europe, in Italy, Spain and England, with the newly adopted surname Sommer.
Her big Hollywood break came from producer Pandro S. Berman, who had seen her in a German drama that screened for the Golden Globes, and offered her a role in “The Prize” where she played chaperone and love interest to Newman’s Nobel Prize-winning character. In the trade publication Variety’s review, they wrote that Sommer, “hasn’t a very scintillating role, but has the looks to make that a secondary issue.” And it would win her the Golden Globe for most promising newcomer.
In Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther sequel “A Shot in the Dark,” she played Maria Gambrelli, a maid framed for murder, who also sparks the romantic interest of Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau. She also posed for Playboy Magazine around that time, in photographs shot by her first husband Joe Hyams. They married in November 1964 and divorced in 1981.
In 1993 she married German hotelier Wolf Walther, who died in July at age 77.
Work slowed a bit in the 1970s, but she found jobs once again in Europe, appearing in the World War I film “Zeppelin” with Michael York as well as the Agatha Christie adaptation “And Then There Were None.” She also starred in two Mario Bava horrors. By the 1990s, she’d turned her focus to painting but she occasionally made appearances in films and television shows. She voiced Yzma in the German dub of “The Emperor’s New Groove.”
Sommer might also be remembered for a bizarre feud with Zsa Zsa Gabor, which originated during their appearance together on the show “Circus of the Stars” in 1984, where Sommer is said to have made comments about Gabor’s body.
In 1990, a war of words in the German media erupted when Gabor was quoted as saying that Sommer was broke, hung out in sleazy bars and earned a living by selling hand-knitted sweaters for $150. Gabor’s husband Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt was also quoted in another publication saying that Sommer was lying about her age, that she was nearly bald and looked 100 years old.
Sommer responded by filing a defamation of character and libel suit seeking $10 million. In 1993, a jury ordered Gabor and her husband to pay Sommer $3.3 million.
Though her looks often seemed to garner the most headlines, Sommer didn’t take the sex symbol designation too seriously, saying that it was essentially meaningless. She told Film Talk in a 2014 interview that some of her favorite actors, like Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner, were also considered sex symbols. Besides, she said, she was always just acting the part.
“My whole life, I have been directed, I have been produced, I spoke the lines written for the character,” she said in the interview. “I was always playing, and the only thing I could bring was my energy. So what is it, this sex appeal? Why was I voted in this list of most sexy women? It’s not because of my looks or anything; it’s because of the energy.”
She did, however, believe in the importance of movie star glamour. In a television interview for the 1967 crime film “Deadlier than the Male,” she told the reporter that she is “very much for glamour on the screen.”
“I think movie stars, if I can use that word...should be something extraordinary and above normal, above average to the people who pay a lot of money to go see them,” Sommer said. “They shouldn’t be the girl next door, like the boy next door. They should be something very much above and people should say ‘oh’ and ‘ah’ when they see them.”
FILE - Elke Sommer poses at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York on May 28, 1980. (AP Photo/Dave Pickoff, File)
FILE - Elke Sommer poses at a bar on the German ocean liner SS Hanseatic in Hamburg on Dec. 5, 1960. (AP Photo/Peter Hillebrecht, File)
FILE - Actress Elke Sommer poses in New York on Jan. 8, 1990. (AP Photo/Marty Reichenthal, File)
FILE - Elke Sommer appears in Los Angeles on Feb. 26, 2004. (AP Photo/Rene Macura, FIle)
FILE - Elke Sommer gestures while answering reporters questions at her home in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Dec. 10, 1993. (AP Photo/Barbara Witz, File)
Patrick Stewart, the classically trained actor who added Shakespearean gravitas to the “Star Trek” and “X-Men” franchises, has died. He was 86.
Stewart died Wednesday in Los Angeles, following “a brief and poignant journey” with Alzheimer's disease and Lewy Body Dementia, spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak said. Stewart’s diagnoses had not been previously disclosed.
“We lost one of the greats of stage and screen today,” Hugh Jackman, a frequent Stewart co-star in the “X-Men” universe, said on social media. “And, in my book, a tremendous friend and man. I learned so much from him. I will miss you, Patrick Stewart, all of my days.”
While best known as Professor Charles Xavier and Captain Jean-Luc Picard from the “X-Men” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation” series and films, respectively, Stewart spent more of his career onstage than in the X-Mansion or on the USS Enterprise.
Besides playing everyone from Claudius to Macbeth, he often performed a one-man rendition of “A Christmas Carol” and did West End and Broadway runs of Harold Pinter's “No Man's Land” and Samuel Beckett's “Waiting for Godot” in repertory with buddy Ian McKellen.
“He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love,” McKellen posted on social media.
He won three Olivier Awards, including one for playing Claudius in “Hamlet” opposite David Tennant. And he had a Grammy — in 1996 for best spoken word album for his recording of “Peter and the Wolf.”
He achieved some of the best reviews of his career when he finally tackled Macbeth for the first time. The production, under the direction of Rupert Goold, debuted in May 2007 at England’s Chichester Festival Theatre, switched to London’s West End and then moved to the Brooklyn Academy of Music before transferring to Broadway in 2008.
Stewart’s performance earned him his sole Tony Award nomination. The Times of London said his Macbeth was “an enthralling creation of frailty, appetite, egotism and grim humor.” The Daily Telegraph said he had turned in “a truly great performance” and The New York Times said it was “a must-see.”
“Nearly 50 years I’ve waited,” Stewart told The Associated Press in 2008. “I learned it when I was 14. I memorized all the soliloquies just because I thought they were great. And they stuck, so I didn’t have to learn those bits of the play, which is a blessing, because learning lines has now become the one curse of this job.”
Raised in Mirfield in Yorkshire, a working-class corner of northern England, the future 24th-century commander of a starship grew up without a bathroom in his house.
Stewart joined an amateur drama group at 12 and memorized Shakespeare for fun as a teen. He won a scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, launching a career as a character actor.
He had been bald since he was 19 — alopecia runs in his family.
His father, a former regimental sergeant major in the British Army, was prone to outbursts of “repeated violence against my mother,” as Stewart wrote in a newspaper piece. “Violence is always a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.”
In his memoir, “Making It So,” Stewart wrote about how he and his older brother Trevor braced for the nights when their dad came home drunk and angry, and attacked their mother. “Sometimes it was with an open hand, other times a closed fist. Always he aimed for her head.”
The son would later become a patron for Refuge, an organization that provides shelter for domestic abuse victims.
“The stage would prove to be a safe space, a refuge from real life in which I could inhabit another person, living in another place and time,” he would write.
Stewart was accepted into the Royal Shakespeare Company and stayed for 14 years, playing everything from Mark Antony to Henry IV to Shylock to Oberon. “People who were not in the company would say to me, ‘Give it a break. Why don’t you go somewhere else?’ And I would say, ‘To do what?‘” he told the AP. “Telly?”
Stewart eventually left to look for more varied work, including the 1981 film “Excalibur.” He had just done a production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in 1987 when an interesting offer came along. “I found myself in Hollywood shooting a syndicated science fiction series, which I was assured would fail.”
It didn’t, of course. Thanks to Stewart’s rich baritone and noble bearing, the “Star Trek” franchise ran for seven years, 178 episodes and produced four feature films. He was known for his slogan “Make it so.”
His adoration for Shakespeare would serve him well when he began to play Jean-Luc Picard, a 24th century starship commander.
“There is a formality to the way they speak and comport themselves that remind me of numerous Shakespearean situations I’d been in onstage. I should play Jean Luc, I realized, as if he were a character in ‘Henry IV,’ which is about brave men,” Stewart wrote in his memoir.
Despite the Borg and Klingons, Stewart still managed to make room for blank verse. He established the Paramount Shakespeare Company, a workshop on Saturday and Sunday mornings for any actor interested. (Stewart revisited Picard in the TV series “Star Trek: Picard.”)
Stewart died just a few days after Walter Koenig, another “Star Trek” icon, who played Ensign Pavel Chekov on the original NBC TV show from 1966 to 1969.
“What a heartbreaking week it has been,” William Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk in the franchise, wrote on Instagram. “Sir Patrick Stewart was a friend, a colleague, and a magnificent actor. From the stage to the bridge of the Enterprise, he brought intelligence, grace, and a deep sense of humanity to everything he did.”
“Star Trek: The Next Generation” gave him higher visibility, which led to more work, including roles in the films “Conspiracy Theory,” “L.A. Story” and on Broadway, where he starred in “The Tempest,” “The Caretaker” and David Mamet’s “A Life in the Theater.” He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in June 2010. Stewart was also an ambassador for the International Rescue Committee.
In July 1992, he and supermodel Cindy Crawford were on the cover of TV Guide’s “Top Turn-Ons,” based on a readers’ poll. In his memoir, Stewart wrote: “Absurd.”
Stewart was first introduced as the character Xavier in the original X-Men trilogy, appearing in three films from 2000 to 2006. He later returned in four more movies before Professor X’s death in 2017’s “Logan.” He reappeared in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” in 2022 and reprised the role in the upcoming “Avengers: Doomsday.”
He also showed off his comedic chops aboard Seth MacFarlane’s Starz show “Blunt Talk” for two series and voiced Poop in “The Emoji Movie.” He made appearances on “Robot Chicken,” “Futurama” and “The Simpsons” (in one episode, Homer loses his hair, and Stewart tells him it’s great to be bald.) One of his last credits was with Jackman in 2026's “The Sheep Detectives.”
Later in life, he proved internet-savvy and found new fans with his humor, posing in a bath in a lobster suit and triggering memes when he posted a photo of him picking apples. When he was mistakenly outed as gay by a British newspaper, he said it was a nice change. “At least I didn’t wake up to the internet telling me I was dead again,” he tweeted.
He married Brooklyn songwriter and singer Sunny Ozell in 2013, with the actor’s “X-Men” co-star McKellen officiating. Stewart later tweeted a photo of the newlyweds in a ball pit.
He is also survived by two children, a daughter, Sophia, and a son, Daniel.
AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr contributed.
FILE - Patrick Stewart, from left, James McAvoy, Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender appear at the UK Premiere of "X-Men: Days Of Future Past" at a central London cinema, Monday, May 12, 2014. (Photo by Jonathan Short/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - Patrick Stewart poses in his dressing room at the Lyceum Theater in New York on Tuesday, April 1, 2008, where he is starring in a production of "Macbeth." (AP Photo/Rick Maiman, File)
FILE - Patrick Stewart, cast member in the Paramount+ television series "Star Trek: Picard" poses for a portrait during the Winter Television Critics Association Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 9, 2023. (Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - Patrick Stewart, left, and Sunny Ozell arrive at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party on Sunday, March 10, 2024, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - Patrick Stewart arrives at the premiere of the third and final season of "Star Trek: Picard" on Feb. 9, 2023, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - Patrick Stewart attends the 84th Annual Peabody Awards on Sunday, June 9, 2024, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)
