About Fiona Lewis
Fiona Lewis is an English actress, born in Westcliffe-on-Sea, Essex in 1946. Among her early credits is an episode of The Saint, with Roger Moore in 1966. She got her start being menaced and looking attractively frightened in low-budget horror films. She was first seen as a busty serving girl in Roman Polanski’s ambitious The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), she then went on to lend an unwonted grace to such blood-soaked fare as Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972), and Blue Blood (1973).
It wasn’t all blood and guts, however. Lewis had a supporting role in the slapstick spy comedy Otley (1969), played a highwayman’s wench in Where’s Jack? (also 1969), was Ian McShane’s girlfriend in the Richard Burton vehicle Villain (1971) and dallied with Liszt in Ken Russell’s bizarre, over-the-top Lisztomania (1975).
Dismayed by the way her career was going in England, Lewis ventured to the U.S. She appeared in the Dino De Laurentiis potboiler Drum (1976), played a journalist in Stunts (1977), and had a few good moments in Brian De Palma’s The Fury (1978) as a sexy government agent who comes to a very unhappy end. She showed up in the western, Wanda Nevada (1979), was a deliciously evil nurse in the Australian Strange Behavior/Dead Kids (1979), had a nice bit as an alien in Strange Invaders (1983) and played a doctor in Joe Dante’s sci-fi adventure Innerspace (1987).
Although Lewis has been seen on British TV (and was made sport of on Monty Python’s Flying Circus), her lone American appearance was as Lucy in the CBS version of Dracula (1974). Between film roles, Lewis has scripted a number of screenplays, worked as a journalist and has had her artwork exhibited.
MISTAKES WERE MADE (Some in French) a memoir, by Fiona Lewis, about her career as a B-movie actress.
Fiona Lewis, an English upper-class girl, arrived in Los Angeles, from London, in the early ’70s. She slipped easily into modeling and acting. The story of her rise to semi-fame is simply this: she was willing to take her clothes off. In L.A., she dated Cary Grant for a while until she realized that it was his daughter, not him, who actually required a date. She had never taken acting classes, but she was selected by Roman Polanski to play a bawdy maid in his film The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, but Your Teeth Are in My Neck.
In California, she was picked by Dino De Laurentiis to be in her first Hollywood film, Drum–two hours jampacked with sadism, depravity, and melodrama. She next starred in Michael Laughlin’s Strange Behavior, playing a diabolical scientist. During the ’70s, Lewis also had liaisons with at least 4 writers, under the false impression that with them she would be allowed to reveal her secret intellectual self.
She lived with a Chicago screenwriter named John until he seduced the leading lady in his directorial debut. Meanwhile, Lewis spent a lot of time at Tony Richardson’s home, where she met writers Nos. 2 and 4. Lewis then posed for Playboy.
By 1977, she had made a few forays into journalism, freelancing for the Los Angeles Times. In between writing assignments and unsatisfactory affairs with writers, she hung out with her girlfriends: women also navigating the end of their 20s.
After her 4th affair, with a writer named Douglas, Lewis decided to end her infatuation with writers.
