Horror | Barbara Steele: Screen Goddess

Barbara Steele is an English film actress. She is best known for starring in Italian gothic horror films of the 1960s. Her breakthrough role came in Italian director Mario Bava's Black Sunday (1960). Steele starred in a string of horror films, including The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962), The Ghost (1963) directed by Riccardo Freda, The Long Hair of Death (1964) and Roger Corman's 1961 adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Pit and the Pendulum, among others. She also starred in Castle of Blood (1964), Terror-Creatures from the Grave and Nightmare Castle (both 1965) and Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968). Steele returned to the horror genre in the later 1970s, appearing in three classic horror films, Silent Scream, Piranha and Shivers (aka They Came From Within). Steele was cast as Julia Hoffman in the 1991 remake of the 1960s ABC television series, Dark Shadows. In 2010, she was a guest star in the Dark Shadows audio drama, The Night Whispers.