Suzy Mandel

Suzy Mandel (born 6 March 1953) is a former actress and model best known for her roles in such mid-1970s British sex comedies as Intimate Games (1976), Confessions of a Driving Instructor (1976), Come Play with Me (1977), The Playbirds (1978), and Adventures of a Plumber's Mate (1978), and for her appearances on The Benny Hill Show.

Born in London, Mandel grew up on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent and later in Essex at Epping, Woodford and Buckhurst Hill. She was partly raised by her grandparents "who owned bars and clubs and holidays camps".

Beginning at age 13, she attended London Academy of Modeling in London.

She began her career as a coat model but was also a catwalk model and later a photographic model. Later, she modelled lingerie and was a contestant on Miss TV Times (broadcast on UK television on 14 June 1974 and presented by Hughie Green).

Mandel's acting career in British sex comedies began in 1976, with her first film, Intimate Games. Benny Hill saw Intimate Games, and this led him to cast Mandel on his eponymous show. She appears in multiple roles on two 1977 episodes of the series (broadcast in the UK 26 January 1977 and 23 March 1977). Of Hill and Jackie Wright's famous "head slapping" routine, she said "Jackie Wright was a chain smoker and he would often hide his cigarette in his mouth or behind his back during scenes. In fact, you could often see a little plume of smoke rising behind him if you looked close enough. Benny would slap his head to fan the smoke away."

On the big screen, she quickly became a favourite of both British sex film directors and audiences. Soon she was receiving equal billing with Mary Millington, the UK's biggest sex symbol of the 1970s. Millington and Mandel's film, Come Play With Me still stands as one of the longest-running films in British film history, and ran continuously at the Moulin Cinema in London's West End from 1977 to 1981.

After the release of her final British sex film, You're Driving Me Crazy (1978), Mandel moved to Los Angeles where, in 1979, she attended the Lee Strasberg Institute for about a year,[unreliable source? ] studying acting and voice. She also studied with noted voice and dialect coach Robert Easton. Mandel continued acting, appearing in the film The Mistress of the Apes (directed by B-movie specialist Larry Buchanan).

She appears in the 1980 comedy The Private Eyes starring Tim Conway and Don Knotts as Hilda, the Upstairs Maid. She guest starred on television shows like The Love Boat.

She also appeared in the hardcore film Blonde Ambition (also known as Can I Come Again), which was shot in New York City in 1977, but only released in 1980. Blonde Ambition stars Mandel as Sugar Cane, half of a talentless duo of singers who become embroiled in the search for a missing brooch. Directed by the eccentric Amero Brothers, the role required Mandel to strip while ice skating, impersonate a drag queen, play the tuba and perform in hardcore sex scenes. (She used a body double for the last.)[citation needed ]

Mandel eventually moved behind the scenes, working on the horror comedy Dead Men Don't Die (1991) starring Elliott Gould as well as co-producing Love Bites, starring Adam Ant, in 1993, (she appears briefly onscreen as well).

In 1996, Mandel revealed in the British newspaper The People that she had quit show business to work as a nurse, caring for people dying from AIDS after several of her friends had died from the disease.

For a short period of time, she ran an art gallery in Beverly Hills, California. However she returned to the nursing work, until 2001, when she was "involved in a very serious accident" which caused her to retire from that work.

In 2006, she returned to producing, working with adult video director Jennifer James on a series, Inside Erotica.

The 2014 tongue-in-cheek British television documentary The Golden Rules of Porn (broadcast on More4 on 9 August 2014) included Mandel discussing her roles in the soft-core British comedies Confessions of a Driving Instructor, Come Play with Me, The Playbirds and sharing her thoughts on bad chat-up lines and high heels.

Mandel has been married more than once. On 16 August 1981, she married wealthy British film financier Stanley Margolis. Margolis had owned Tigon British Film Productions, the company that released some of her best-known British films, and that would later co-produce the 1993 film True Romance. She and Margolis divorced in 1994.