Actor who found teenage fame playing charming innocents but struggled to break free of typecastingMidway through an acting career she abandoned early, out of frustrations with her casting, Yvette Mimieux, who has died aged 80, said the parts she was offered were usually “sex objects or vanilla pudding”. Her pale beauty was striking, but ethereal rather than fragile; qualities that led to the early roles that foreshadowed her entire career. “I suppose I have a soulful quality,” she said. “I was often cast as a wounded person, the sensitive soul.”
She was only 15 when the talent agent Jim Byron supposedly spotted her from his helicopter while she walked a horse in the
Hollywood Hills; he landed and gave her his card. The other version of the story was more mundane: he spotted her auditioning for a bit part in Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock. He generated publicity for her through beauty contests and modelling.