Lynne Frederick

By this point in her career, Frederick was earning over £4,000 (£25,016.34 in 2020) per week working on films alone, and was being represented by A-list Hollywood agents Hazel Malone Management and Dennis Selinger. In addition, she had reached the point where she no longer needed to go on auditions for roles, and was being sent stacks of scripts and lucrative film offers.

Along with Frederick’s rising mainstream success as an actress, she emerged as a fashion trendsetter and model in the disco music culture of the late 1970s. She became a popular fashion icon in Japan and a frequent face in the Japanese entertainment magazine, Screen, making the cover three times and being featured as a celebrity pin-up and centrefold subject. Frederick was also frequently photographed by Terry Fincher, and was considered to be one of his muses.

Contrary to popular belief, their marriage started well, and they were a popular red carpet couple among the British public. Writer Stephen Bach said of their relationship, “I noticed as he [Peter Sellers] rose, that not once in the long talkative afternoon had he let go of Lynne’s hand, nor had she moved away. She transfused him simultaneously with calm and energy, and the hand he clung to was less a hand than a lifeline”. He also added that he believed that Lynne had a unique ability to calm Sellers' manic moods; “the atmosphere was uneasy only until Lynne Frederick came into the room, exuding an aura of calm that somehow enveloped us all like an Alpine fragrance. She was only in her mid-twenties, but instantly observable as the mature center around which the household revolved, an emotional anchor that looked like a daffodil.” British actor, David Niven, who was a friend to both Sellers and Frederick, had credited Peters happiness to that of Lynne being a devoted and loving wife.

Their marriage went downhill as Sellers' ill health and other personal problems got increasingly worse, and Frederick forfeited her growing and lucrative acting career to care for him. Seller’s biographer, Ed Sikov, claimed that Frederick was offered a lucrative five-month television job in Moscow, but Sellers made her turn it down so that he wouldn’t be left alone.

Frederick’s relationship with her stepchildren (Michael Sellers, Sarah Sellers, and Victoria Sellers) was, like Peter’s relationship with them, distant and often strained. When Lynne began her relationship with Peter, she made efforts to establish a friendly connection with them. Sarah recalled of Lynne, “she seemed quite nice to begin with. I actually told dad that I thought she was a bit stupid. But she came across as very bubbly, friendly, warm and interested. But once they got married things definitely changed”. Michael Sellers shared his thoughts of Frederick in his exposé memoir where he said “my first impression of Lynne didn’t do much to alter my views. She was not exactly my idea of sweetness and light. It didn’t concern me that she lacked the good looks of dad’s past wives and girlfriends, but those innocent eyes, certainly her strongest feature, didn’t deceive me”. Michael Sellers also bluntly acknowledged his intentional hostility and lack of respect towards Lynne when they first met, “I’m afraid we weren’t very kind in our judgement of Lynne. Sarah thought she wasn’t too bright. But our views didn’t really count for much. Because whatever our opinions, they would be of purely academic interest”. Months after Frederick’s death in 1994, Victoria remarked “I feel now that she’s in hell - I don’t know but that makes me feel better.”

One of Frederick’s closest friends was Mauritian actress, Françoise Pascal. The two first met when they co-starred on a 1972 episode of the television anthology series, BBC Play of the Month, and quickly became “firm friends”. Pascal recalled that they remained friends for several years before regretfully losing touch after Frederick married Sellers in 1977. In April 2020, a few weeks before the 26th anniversary of Frederick’s death, Pascal tweeted a photo of herself and Frederick, with the caption “I think of her very often! Always had that fresh baby face! RIP Lynne! Xxx”.

Julie Andrews stated in her 2019 autobiography Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years that she suspected her husband Blake Edwards was having an affair with Lynne (who was married to Sellers at the time) during production of Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978). When Andrews confronted Blake about the "flirtations" between him and Frederick, Julie asked him point-blank which he preferred: staying married or continuing this flirtation. After this confrontation, Blake ceased all alleged flirtations with Frederick. She later had a fall-out with Edwards and Andrews after successfully suing them for their involvement with the film Trail of the Pink Panther (1982), claiming that it insulted Sellers memory. She never spoke to them again.

There has been continued belief that Frederick would have achieved greater career success had it not been for her marriage to Sellers and untimely death. It’s even been theorized that she had the potential to attain stardom equivalent to that of Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, and Julie Walters.

In 2018, Judy Matheson revealed that she had worked with Frederick in the early 1970s. They were slated to appear in a film together that was to be shot in the Netherlands, with John Hamil, Robert Coleby, and Nina Francis. Because Frederick was young and a relative newcomer to Hollywood at the time, Matheson (who was a few years older and had industry experience) was asked to be Lynne's chaperone for the trip (as Lynne's mother was unavailable). They spent about three weeks lodged together in a hotel room before production on the film was prematurely closed due to financial withdrawals. Matheson stated that she enjoyed Frederick's company, and that they managed to have fun together despite the production struggles. After returning to Great Britain, they corresponded for a while before gradually losing touch with each other.

In her 2014 memoir I Said Yes to Everything, Lee Grant claimed that during production of the film Voyage of the Damned (1976) Frederick, then aged 21, engaged in an affair with Sam Wanamaker, who was 35 years Frederick’s senior and married to Charlotte Holland at the time. Grant also stated that she witnessed all the men on set, including the film's director Stuart Rosenberg, make salacious passes at Frederick, all of which she rejected.

In the years after her death, Frederick's legacy remained poisoned and she seldom was talked about in favourable terms. In the 2004 book The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Roger Lewis claimed that "there is yet to find a single person to say a good thing about Lynne". British journalist Nigel Dempster had a profound dislike for Frederick and referred to her as an “avaricious and cunning man-eater”. In 1995, a year after her death, she was excluded from the 67th Academy Awards annual In Memoriam, despite being in two Oscar-nominated films.

She received minimal attention in the 2004 movie adaptation of Lewis's book where she was portrayed by British actress Emilia Fox. All scenes featuring Fox's portrayal of Frederick were deleted from the final cut of the film, but included in the supplemental features of the film's DVD release. On portraying Frederick, Fox stated "I had thought very carefully about playing Lynne. I wanted to represent her in a way that I thought was fair - which was a very young girl being taken up in this world of laughter and light, and then finding out the reality. Peter Sellers was completely obsessed by work and it's very difficult to live with someone like that."

On 27 April 1994, Frederick was found dead in her West Los Angeles home, aged 39. A post-mortem failed to determine the cause of death. Her remains were cremated at Golders Green Crematorium in London, and her ashes were mingled and then interred with the ashes of Peter Sellers.

In 1985, Judge Charles Hobhouse ruled in favor of Frederick awarding her $1.475-million dollars, but dismissed her request to ban the film. Despite her noble intentions to protect Sellers legacy, the press further sneered at her. Frederick herself stated “I hope this proves that I’m not a gold digger! I’ve risked my entire fortune and the financial future of my daughter to protect Peter's reputation.” After the lawsuit, Frederick continued to guard Sellers films and went to great lengths to make sure each one was handled with respect and dignity.

In December 1982, she married California surgeon and heart specialist Dr. Barry Unger with whom she bore her only child, Cassie Cecilia Unger (born 1983); they divorced in 1991.

Shortly after the release of Trail of the Pink Panther (1982), Frederick filed suit against MGM, United Artists, and film director Blake Edwards for 3 million dollars in damages and to block the films distribution. She claimed that the film tarnished Peter Sellers' reputation, and was made without authorization from his estate, which she had control over.

In 1982, Frederick's screen appearance as Catherine Howard from the film Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972), was used on the cover art for the 1982 novel The Dark Rose by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.

She briefly married David Frost (on 25 January 1981), and her supposed eagerness to remarry so quickly after Sellers' death caused a loss of dignity in the public eye, and was one of the major factors in her blacklisting. Frederick divorced Frost after 17 months. During the course of their marriage, she suffered a miscarriage in March 1982.

Sellers was reportedly in the process of excluding her from his will a week before he died of a heart attack on 24 July 1980, the day before her 26th birthday. The planned changes to the will not having been finalised, she inherited almost his entire estate, worth an estimated £4.5 million (£19.4 million today), and his children received £800 each (£3,456 today). Despite appeals from a number of Sellers' friends to make a fair settlement to the children, Frederick refused to give her stepchildren anything due to their rocky relationship with her and Peter. After Sellers' death, her stepson, Michael Sellers, published an exposé memoir on his relationship with his father, P.S. I Love You: An Intimate Portrait of Peter Sellers. In the book he accused Frederick of being a deceitful, cunning, and narcissistic fraud who only married his father for his money. He also made allegations that Frederick had cheated his sisters and him out of their inheritance by intentionally manipulating their father to alter the will in her favour. This lead to the press to vilify and label her as a “gold digger”.

After Sellers death in 1980, UA wanting to cash in on the continuation of the series elected Edwards to construct a new film from outtakes and deleted scenes from the five previous Pink Panther movies featuring Peter Sellers. A handful of new material involving other actors was filmed for this movie. Some of the older material dated as far back as nineteen years before this movie was made to 1963. The negligence in continuity was evident in many scenes, and was subjected to heavy mockery from film critics.

The tension between them increased after the box-office and critical failure of The Prisoner of Zenda (1979), followed by negative tabloid reports of rumours of drug use, infidelity, domestic abuse, and other alleged lurid conflicts. Despite the struggles, Frederick stood by Sellers and cared for him as his health continually declined and he became more temperamental. Although they separated a number of times, they always came back together.

Following her marriage to Peter Sellers, Frederick's career stalled for over a year while she tended him through poor health. This included supporting and looking after him on the sets of his films. She attempted to make a career comeback in 1978, but the year long absence had cost Frederick her burgeoning stardom.

Frederick campaigned and auditioned for several films. The role that she most desired, and spent a great deal of time lobbying herself for, was the leading role of Meggie Cleary in The Thorn Birds. Despite her lengthy and accomplished acting resume, the producers decided they wanted a much bigger catch. Other roles she campaigned for included Cosette in the 1978 television adaptation of Les Misérables (1978), and Anne Sullivan in the television remake of The Miracle Worker (1979), none of which she received. She made her final onscreen appearance with her husband, Sellers, in the 1979 remake of The Prisoner of Zenda, which was a box-office and critical flop. Her final credit was as an executive producer on Sellers' last film The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu.

Frederick's first marriage at age 22 was to Peter Sellers. They met at a Dennis Selinger dinner party in 1976 after Frederick had finished making Schizo (1976). Sellers first proposed to her two days after their first meeting, but she turned him down. They dated for a year before Sellers proposed to her again. They eloped in Paris on February 18, 1977.

Frederick began 1976 with an appearance on a controversial episode of the BBC series Play for Today, "The Other Woman", in which she played a sexually enigmatic girl who falls for a lesbian artist played by Jane Lapotaire. Later the same year, she delivered a critically acclaimed performance in the Oscar nominated film, Voyage of the Damned (1976). She followed that with a leading role in a Pete Walker slasher horror film, Schizo (1976), a movie that became an underground hit in the horror film community.

In the London high court, the defense argued that the film was meant to be a tribute to Sellers, but Frederick stated “It was an appalling film: Not a tribute to my husband but an insult to his memory.” Her chief objection was that her late husband had specifically prohibited the use of outtakes from earlier Pink Panther films in his lifetime, and that his estate should have had the right to control the use of outtakes after his death. The idea of using outtakes in future films was presented in Sellers' lifetime when Edwards had shot and edited a three-hour version of The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), hoping to repeat the runaway success of The Great Race, with Dreyfus as the melodramatic villain in the fashion of Jack Lemmon's Professor Fate. However United Artists objected to this long version and the film was trimmed from three hours to an hour and a half.

Frederick landed a role in the Spanish romance film A Long Return (Largo retorno) (1975), where she also made her debut and only appearance singing on a film's soundtrack. She also appeared alongside Fabio Testi in Four of the Apocalypse as well as in the adventure film Cormack of the Mounties. She returned to playing a teen-aged character in the Spanish film El Vicio Y La Virtud (1975).

During production of Four of the Apocalypse (1975), she was rumoured to have had a brief romance with her co-star Fabio Testi (who was having trouble in his relationship with actress Ursula Andress at the time). Naturally, this helped Testi and Frederick with their chemistry in the movie, and they were paired again for the film Cormack of the Mounties (1975). There has been much speculation about such a romance between Testi and Frederick, but it has not been confirmed.

In a 1975 interview with Men Only, Frederick discussed that she "partially agreed" with Women's Lib. Adding "I agree with the fact that women should have equal rights", but adding that she also believed in some old fashioned gender roles. "I agree that there are certain things that men are designed to do; just as there are things women are designed to do."

Frederick's most prominent television role came in 1974 where she appeared on three episodes of the critically acclaimed and Emmy-winning series The Pallisers. The series featured a huge cast of prominent and rising British actors, including Anthony Andrews, of whom she played the love interest.

Frederick, who never met her biological father, regarded actor David Niven as her adopted father figure. They first met while filming the television film adaptation of The Canterville Ghost (1974). They remained close friends over the years until Niven's death in 1983, which occurred just eight weeks after the birth of her daughter. As a child, she was very close with her mother, Iris, and grandmother, Cecilia, but was estranged from both of them during the course of her marriage to Sellers. Iris said of her daughter’s marriage: “How could my daughter marry someone like Peter Sellers with his track record? The marriage is doomed from the start. My own marriage ended unhappily when Lynne was two. I tried to compensate for her having no father by devoting all the time I wasn’t working to her. Perhaps if I had married again she wouldn’t have gone on choosing men twice her age as boyfriends - looking for a father figure I suppose“.

She was the first recipient of the award for Best New Coming Actress from the Evening Standard British Film Awards in 1973, for her breakout performances in Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972) and The Amazing Mr. Blunden (1972). She is one of only eight actresses, and the youngest, to hold this title.

៛ Performed live 25 December 1973 on the BBC show The Generation Game

Her best-known appearance was in 1972 where she played Catherine Howard, in Henry VIII and His Six Wives. Her next role was in the 1972 family film The Amazing Mr. Blunden; in 1973, she won the Evening Standard British Film Award for Best New Actress. She continued to work in various film and television projects throughout 1973 and 1974 where she often was cast in the archetype of the girl next door, an ingénue, or a princess. Some of the shows she appeared on were Follyfoot, The Generation Game, and an adaptation of The Canterville Ghost where she first met David Niven, who became a lifelong friend.

For many years she was best remembered as the last wife and widow of Peter Sellers. In recent years she has begun to establish a newfound cult following for her assorted collection of film work in Hollywood. Some of her better known performances include her roles in films such as Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), The Amazing Mr. Blunden (1972), Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972), and Voyage of the Damned (1976).

Other films of hers such as Vampire Circus (1971), Phase IV (1974), Four of the Apocalypse (1975), A Long Return (Largo retorno) (1975), and Schizo (1976) have all become underground hits or established a status as a cult film in their respective genres.

In 1971 she appeared in the biographical film Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), in which she played the Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia, second eldest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II. For the film's press tour, she toured Europe with her three co-stars Ania Marson, Candace Glendenning, and Fiona Fullerton. That same year, she auditioned for the role of Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1972), but lost the role to her friend and Nicholas and Alexandra co-star, Fiona Fullerton. She was also first runner-up for the role of Saint Clare of Assisi in the Franco Zeffirelli production of Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972), which ultimately went to Judi Bowker.

When she made the film Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), the director, Franklin J. Schaffner, arranged for Lynne and her co-stars (Michael Jayston, Janet Suzman, Roderick Noble, Ania Marson, Candace Glendenning, and Fiona Fullerton) to live together as a family during the nine month production period, as to add more authenticity to their performances. During this time she developed a close friendship with her co-star Fiona Fullerton (who played her younger sister in the film). They remained good friends for several years.

When No Blade of Grass (1970) was released, the film received mixed reviews from critics. Despite the lukewarm reception of the film, it made Frederick an overnight sensation, and her career skyrocketed. She became a teen idol among the British public in the early 1970s, achieving the success and popularity equivalent to that of Hayley Mills and Olivia Hussey. She was regularly featured in newspaper articles and fashion magazines as a model and cover girl. Her most notable spread was in the British Vogue in September 1971, where she was photographed by Patrick Anson, 5th Earl of Lichfield. In addition, she also appeared in several television commercials for products that include Camay soap. Frederick then signed a cosmetics contract with Mennen, and became a spokesmodel for Protein 21 shampoo, starring in nationwide campaign print and television ads. A British national newspaper chose her as its "Face of 1971", and she was hailed as one of Hollywood's most promising newcomers.

Over time, views towards her image gradually shifted, and she soon gained a cult following through her films, and has been described as one of the most promising, talented, beautiful, and ascending young British actresses of the 1970s. Many credit the negative events in her life (the loss of her acting career, blacklisting in Hollywood, and untimely death) to her marriage to Sellers. Even Roger Lewis, who was blunt about his disdain for Frederick, admitted that "of all of Sellers's wives, Lynne Frederick was the most poorly treated". One of the first people to advocate for Lynne was American author, Ed Sikov, in the 2002 book, Mr. Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers: "Lynne Frederick deserves a bit of compassion herself in retrospect. It was the helpless Peter she nursed, the dependent and infantile creature of impulse and consequent contradiction. Patiently she ministered him".

Lynne Maria Frederick (25 July 1954 – 27 April 1994) was a British actress, film producer, and fashion model known for her classic English rose beauty. In a diverse and promising career, spanning ten years, she made over thirty appearances in film and television.

Frederick was born in Hillingdon, Middlesex, to Andrew Frederick (1914–1983) and Iris C. Frederick (née Sullivan, 1928–2006). Lynne's parents separated when she was two years old, and she was brought up by her single mother and maternal grandmother, Cecilia. Frederick never knew or met her father, and had no personal relationships or connections with his side of the family. Although her mother had good employment as a casting director for Thames Television, they had limited financial means, and often lived a frugal lifestyle.