Her breakthrough role came in 1972 with the film Junior Bonner, in which she starred alongside her then-boyfriend Steve McQueen.

[2] Barbara Leigh was born in Ringgold, Georgia.

At the age of 17, she gave birth to her first son, Finley Gerald "Gerry" Haynes, Jr. on July 8, 1964 in Tennessee.

[3] In 2002, she published a memoir titled The King, McQueen, and The Love Machine (ISBN 1401038859), which accounts for her romances with McQueen, Elvis Presley, and Jim Aubrey in the early 1970s.

[4] In January 2014, Leigh retired from Playboy Enterprises Inc. after working with the company for almost 17 years.