Barbara Leigh-Hunt dead at 88: British actress appeared in the Alfred Hitchcock movie Frenzy

British actress Barbara Leigh-Hunt, who was born in Bath, Somerset, was brought up by her mother Betty (Elizabeth) after she left her father Austin Leigh-Hunt. Barbara’s mother Betty worked in Boots and used to take Barbara often to the theatre in both Bath and Bristol.

After attending Kensington High School for Girls when she moved with her mum to London, Barbara then later attended the Bristol Old Vic theatre school and was their ‘most promising student’ when she left in 1953.

Barbara Leigh-Hunt not only toured in productions of Shakespeare plays A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night but also performed in Shakespeare's Love’s Labour Lost in Bristol.

The Guardian reported that “In 1967 she married the actor Richard Pasco and became stepmother to his son, William, from his first marriage. While the two actors did appear together, it was never as a double act in the manner of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. They were in demand together for poetry recitals, and were both in 1981 RSC productions of Ostrovsky’s The Forest and Schnitzler’s La Ronde, Leigh-Hunt as an actor inflaming a somewhat over-schematic production by John Barton with her fluttering fake orgasm – as she put it: “Well, at least that’s better than acting in stupid plays!”

When it came to Barbara Leigh-Hunt’s roles on television, she appeared as Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in 1995 as well as performing alongside Reese Witherspoon in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair in 2004.

Her most notable movie success was in Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy and in the film, her character was raped and strangled by a necktie murderer.

In 2017, Barbara Leigh-Hunt told the BBC that Hitchcock’s team approached her regarding the violence in Frenzy and Barbara said:"They wanted to know if I was going to be upset. But I'd just played Lady Macbeth on stage so I didn't see how I could honestly object," she said.

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"With me Hitch was remarkably kind and considerate. He knew it was my first film and that I was terrified. He had my chair placed beside his on the studio floor and he let me sit through rehearsals so I could get a feel for the film.

"He loved corny jokes and wordplay. Once when we'd sat through a terribly slow rehearsal he said: 'Too many dog's feet! What do I mean?'

"And I said 'Pawses'… and he was thrilled that I understood his sense of humour. He was a courteous man: he was very angry when he discovered I hadn't been given a studio car to get me to and from Pinewood."