Doctor Dolittle Actor Dies at 86: Inside Samantha Eggar’s Life, Career and Legacy
Samantha Eggar, the British actress who charmed as Emma Fairfax in Doctor Dolittle, has died at 86. She passed October 15, 2025, at her Sherman Oaks home after an illness, her daughter Jenna Stern told The Hollywood Reporter.
Sad news today: Samantha Eggar, the British star who went toe to toe with a butterfly-obsessed Terence Stamp in The Collector and later charmed (and unnerved) audiences across decades of film and TV, has died. She was 86.
What happened
Eggar died on October 15, 2025, at her home in Sherman Oaks. Her daughter, actress Jenna Stern, shared the news with The Hollywood Reporter and said her mother had been dealing with an illness for the last five years.
'She lived a long, fabulous life.'
Born March 5, 1939, in London, Eggar built one of those careers that zigzags in the best way: stage to movies to TV to voiceover, even video games. If you first met her as Emma Fairfax in Doctor Dolittle (1967), you were seeing only one chapter.
How she got here
Eggar trained in theater in the UK, doing Shakespeare and classical plays, before jumping to film in the early 1960s. The big swing came with William Wyler's The Collector (1965), where she played Miranda Grey, a kidnapped art student locked in a deeply unsettling battle of wills opposite Terence Stamp. That performance changed everything.
- Breakthrough: The Collector (1965), directed by William Wyler; Eggar as Miranda Grey opposite Terence Stamp
- Hollywood leads: Walk, Don't Run (1966), Doctor Dolittle (1967), The Molly Maguires (1970)
- Genre pivot in the 1970s: psychological and horror turns in The Dead Are Alive (1972), The Uncanny (1977), and David Cronenberg's The Brood (1979)
- North America move and TV run: guest appearances on Columbo, Hart to Hart, and Starsky & Hutch
- Voice work: Hera in Disney's Hercules
- Games era (yes, really): Gabriel Knight 3 and 007: Nightfire
- Active years are generally listed as 1960 to 2012
The hardware
The Collector remains her signature achievement. It won her a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama in 1966 and the Best Actress award at Cannes, plus an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. She also picked up Spain's Sant Jordi Award for that performance. A bit later, in 1980, she won a Genie Award in Canada for The Brood.
Why she mattered
Eggar had that rare early lightning strike with The Collector, then refused to calcify into one thing. Romantic leads, political dramas, pulp horror, prestige TV one-offs, animation, games — she kept shifting lanes without losing her edge. It is a quietly impressive legacy, and a reminder that longevity in this business is as much about curiosity as it is about spotlight moments.