Actress Elke Sommer has died aged 85, one week before her 86th birthday, her stepson has reported. Sommer died from heart failure at her home in Bel Air, Los Angeles, according to Sebastian Walther.
Walther also said that Sommer’s husband, Wolf Walther, died three months earlier after a battle with cancer.
Born in Berlin, Sommer built a film career spanning nearly six decades and became internationally known for playing Maria Gambrelli alongside Peter Sellers in the 1964 comedy sequel A Shot in the Dark, part of the Pink Panther franchise.
She later appeared in Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! in 1966, And Then There Were None in 1974, and the British comedy Carry On Behind in 1975. That same year, she reunited with Sellers in The Prisoner of Zenda.
Sommer also worked with stars including James Garner, Dick Van Dyke, Stephen Boyd, Paul Newman and Edward G Robinson during her career.
Her television credits included The Six Million Dollar Man, St Elsewhere and Inside the Third Reich, alongside a number of television films.
In the 1980s, Sommer became embroiled in a legal dispute with actress Zsa Zsa Gabor after the pair worked together on Circus of the Stars. Sommer sued Gabor and her husband for defamation and won 3.3 million dollars in damages following published interviews that she said had damaged her reputation.
Sommer’s final credit was as the voice of Nette in the 2017 animated short A Thousand Kisses.
