© DR -Barbara Steele / Bio-Filmo

Barbara Steele (born December 29, 1937, Birkenhead, Cheshire, England) 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), now hailed as a classic.Steele starred in a string of horror films, including The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962), The Ghost directed by Riccardo Freda, and Roger Corman's 1961 adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Pit and the Pendulum, among others. She guested on various British television shows including the spy drama Danger Man starring Patrick McGoohan.

She took the role of Julia Hoffman in the 1991 revival of the 1960s TV series Dark Shadows. In 2010, she was a guest star in the Dark Shadows audio drama The Night Whispers.In 2010, actor-writer Mark Gatiss interviewed Steele about her role in Black Sunday (1960) for his BBC documentary series A History of Horror.

  Partial filmography

Upstairs and Downstairs (1959)

Your Money or Your Wife (1960)

Black Sunday (1960) aka Mask of the Demon

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962) aka Raptus

8½ (1963)

The Ghost (1963) aka Lo Spettro

White Voices (1964)

Castle of Blood (1964) aka Danza Macabre

The Long Hair of Death (1964) directed by Antonio Margheriti

Terror-Creatures from the Grave (1965) aka Five Graves For A Medium

Nightmare Castle (1965) aka Lovers Beyond the Grave

The She Beast (1966)

Young Törless (1966)

Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968) aka The Crimson Cult

Caged Heat (1974)

Shivers (1975) aka They Came From Within

Piranha (1978)

Silent Scream (1980)

Dark Shadows (TV series revival) (1991)