Dana Wynter, the elegant British actress best known for her role in the original 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers,' has died at the age of 79.

Wynter died Thursday of congestive heart failure at Ojai Valley Community Hospital's Continuing Care Center, said her son, Mark Bautzer.

In the 1956 sci-fi classic, she played Becky Driscoll, love interest of Kevin McCarthy's Dr. Miles Bennell in the tale of a small town being insidiously taken over by aliens who are able to replicate humans.



Wynter said in 1999 interview for Starlog magazine: "It was just supposed to be a plain, thrilling kind of picture. That was what Allied Artists thought they were making.... We realized ... that we were making an anti-ism picture. Anti-ism - fascism, communism, all that kind of thing. We took it for granted that's what we were making but it wasn't spoken about openly on the set or anything like that."

The film is now regarded as an indictment of the McCarthyism of the 1950s. It's been remade several times, including a 1978 version with Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams.

Tom Weaver, a science-fiction film expert who conducted that interview, told The Times, "Wynter is quite attractively English, and very different from the 'average' sci-fi leading ladies of the '50s, many of whom were pinup girl-types none too convincingly playing scientists or biologists."

Her other films include the thriller 'The List of Adrian Messenger' with George C. Scott and Kirk Douglas, 'Sink the Bismarck!' and 'Airport.'

She starred with Robert Lansing in the '60s series 'The Man Who Never Was,' and frequently guest starred on series like 'Hawaii Five-O,' 'Ironside,' 'Cannon' and 'The Rockford Files.'

Wynter was "the most wonderful woman and an incredibly talented writer," her son said. She wrote the 2005 book 'Other People, Other Places: Memories of Four Continents' and was an avid animal-rights advocate. She also had her own byline for the English newspaper, 'The Guardian.'

[via Los Angeles Times]