She grew up in Uppsala, Uppland, and was the Swedish national decathlon champion before she competed in the pageant.

She studied acting along with John Gavin, Clint Eastwood, and Barbara Eden, among the other contract actors.

In The Benny Goodman Story (1955) she asks for an autograph[1] and in Istanbul (1957) she appears as a flight attendant near the film's end.

[2] During her yearlong reign as Miss Universe, she traveled in the United States and met G. David Schine, a hotel-business heir who was a central figure in the Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954.

In 1996, the couple and one of their sons died in a private airplane accident, the result of an engine failure shortly after take-off.