Uschi Digard

Beyond school, she indulged her passion for skiing, swimming, outdoor life[3] and nudism,[2][3] which would later be integral to her persona as a model and actress.

[3] Digard is proficient in German, French and Italian (the national languages of Switzerland), Swedish, Spanish, and English.

[3][4] She began her working life in jobs that made use of her gifts as a linguist: at London's Regent Palace Hotel; in the jewellery trade in the Canary Islands, Sweden and Switzerland; and at the Olympic Games in Mexico City.

[3] She continued to sideline as an interpreter and translator even after achieving celebrity in the entertainment industry, including for a Californian aircraft manufacturer.

She says she lived there "for three years" in the sixties when her husband had a show on Swedish television, but her chronology implies a shorter period, approximately summer 1967 to autumn 1968.

[7] She started at the bottom as a bit player and supporting actress in sexploitation films, with her uncredited turn as a hitch-hiker in Gary Graver's The Kill (1968) possibly her first screen appearance.

Yet even in Z movies, Digard developed a reputation for her work ethic and commitment to making projects succeed — which extended to stepping in as a stunt double for more trepidatious colleagues if necessary.

Among the dozens of features in which Digard did cameos and played minor roles were Superchick (1973) starring Joyce Jillson, as the character Mayday; Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975), as a prisoner; Sam Peckinpah's The Killer Elite (1975), as a girl at a party; Richard Franklin's Fantasm (1976), as Super Girl; Chesty Anderson, USN (1976), as the Baron's girlfriend; Female Chauvinists (1976), as a character called Pussy; and John Landis's The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), as the woman showering in the segment "Catholic High School Girls in Trouble".

[7] Some of this material was later recycled to create pseudo-features such as John Holmes and the All-Star Sex Queens (1980)[11] or anthologised on videocassette and DVD.

Her Amazon-like screen presence and enthusiasm for the genre made her a favourite in the niche market for sexy fighting loops,[3][6] of which she did at least thirty.