Barbara Leigh

Biography

While still a student at the Old Vic, Barbara Leigh-Hunt made her first professional stage appearance. Leigh-Hunt subsequently appeared in Shakespearean productions in England, Europe and the U.S. The first of her handful of films was Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972), in which she played the "praying" rape/murder victim. That same year, she played Catherine Parr in Henry VIII and His Six Wives, and was seen on TV as the wife of naturalist Sir Richard Burton in Search for the Nile. Twelve years later, she hosted a British TV weekly, Playing Shakespeare. Though she has essayed virtually all the classic female roles from Portia to Saint Joan, when asked her favorite role, Leigh-Hunt invariably replies "the next one." Barbara Leigh-Hunt is married to actor Richard Pasco.