The most memorable performances by the flame-haired actor Samantha Eggar, who has died aged 86, occupied two distinct camps: either terrified or terrifying. In The Collector (1965), she was Miranda, an art-school student abducted by the shy but sinister lepidopterist Freddie (Terence Stamp), who imprisons her in the cellar of his country house in the hope that she will come around to loving him.
Eggar received an Oscar nomination for the film, and both she and Stamp won acting prizes at Cannes. Her role demanded that she ricochet between extreme states of distress, some feigned to gain the upper hand over her captor, others paralysingly real, and interludes of calm and even tenderness, during which Miranda tries to convince Freddie to release her. “If you let me go now, I shall begin to admire you,” she says softly. “I’ll think, ‘Well, he had me at his mercy but he was chivalrous. He behaved like a real gentleman.’”
