NEW YORK (AP) - Yvette Mimieux, the white-and-blue-eyed 1960s movie star of "Where the Boys Are," "The Time Machine" and "Light in the Piazza" has died. She was 80 years old.
Family spokeswoman Michelle Bega said Mimieux died of natural causes in her sleep on Monday evening at her Los Angeles home.
In 1960's "The Time Machine", based on H.G. Wells' 1895 novella, Mimieux starred alongside Rod Taylor as Vina, a member of the peaceful, blond-haired Eloi people in the year 800,000, who realized this. Not that they are being reared as food by underground Morlocks.
That role and others that soon followed made Mimiaux one of the brightest stars of the '60s. That same year, he starred in the MGM teen film "Where the Boys Are" as one of four college students on spring break in Florida. Her character, distraught over sexual harassment at a motel, drives into traffic in despair.
"I think I had a soulmate quality," she told the Washington Post in 1979. "I was often cast in a wounded, 'sensitive' role."
Yvette Carmen Mimieux was born on January 8, 1942, in Los Angeles to a French father and a Mexican mother. She was "discovered" at age 15 when publicist Jim Byrne, told her, spotted her on a halter path from a helicopter while flying over the Hollywood Hills. He and a friend were on horseback; Byron landed in front of them and gave him his card. Mimieux started out as a model before MGM signed her in 1959.
"The subtle approach is the thing," Byrne told the AP in 1961. "I think we have another Garbo on our hands."
And for a few years, Mimieux was ubiquitous. Life magazine put her on the cover with the headline: "Warming Starlet." He did eight films before turning 21.
Mimieux starred in four films in 1962, including Vincent Minnelli's "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" and Guy Green's "Light in the Piazza". Later, she played the beautiful, mentally challenged daughter of Olivia de Havilland. On a trip to Italy, Mimieux's character Clara is pursued by a young Italian in Florence, played by George Hamilton.
Mimieux played a bride in "Toys in the Attic" (1963), a bride in "Dr. Kildare" (1964) and "Joy in the Morning" (1965). He was nominated for a Golden Globe three times, including for his role in Aaron Spelling's short-lived ABC series "The Most Deadly Game". In the 70s and 80s, she increasingly appeared in TV movies, some of which she helped write.
Mimieux co-wrote and co-produced the 1984 CBS TV film "Obsessive Love," about a neurotic fan obsessed with a soap opera star. Mimieux said she had to fight the network to play a woman, played by herself, in such a role. His idea stemmed from John Hinckley's obsession with Jodie Foster, only with the gender roles reversed.
"The network thought people wouldn't believe me as this woman. They told me, 'She's a loner, and she shouldn't be attractive,'" Mimiaux told The New York Times in 1984. "I asked her , 'Are you saying that only unattractive people can be crazy or lonely or incomplete. lives?'"
Mimieux said that television had never had a "love affair" with film. But she complained about the kind of roles she was given, and the one-dimensional type of women she was written for. (One of his last notable films was the 1979 Disney film "The Black Hole".) So Mimieux retired from show business in the late '40s. His interests always went beyond fame, including archaeology, painting and travel. Off-screen, Mimieux was much more than the naive starlet she used to see as a dove.
"I decided I didn't want to live a full public life," she told the Post. "When fan magazines started taking pictures of me making sandwiches for my husband, I said no.
"You know, there are tribes in Africa who believe that a camera steals a tiny bit of your soul, and in a way I think that's true of living your private life in public. It takes something away from your relationships, it cheapens them."
Mimieux first married Evan Harland Angber in 1959 before later divorcing. She was married to film director Stanley Donnan from 1972 to 1985. In 1986, she married real estate mogul Howard F. Ruby. She is survived by Ruby and several stepchildren.