Antonia de Sancha (born 14 September 1961 in Hammersmith, London) is an English actress and businesswoman best known as the former mistress of British Conservative Member of Parliament and Cabinet minister David Mellor which became public knowledge in 1992.
[1][2] She is the daughter of a Spanish film producer father, who died in the mid-1980s,[3] and a Swedish mother who, suffering from severe clinical depression, died by suicide 18 months later, shortly before her daughter began studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
[1] At the time of revelation of her affair, de Sancha was described by some news outlets as a "soft-porn actress" because she had played the part of a prostitute in a film in which she had simulated sex.
"It was emotional rape", de Sancha told an interviewer 10 years after the scandal referring to the bugging of her flat which led to the affair being made public.
[2] De Sancha subsequently ran an Indian textiles importing business in Portobello Road,[2] Kensington, West London.