Born Alexandra Zuck in Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1942, Sandra Dee was the archetypal all-American teen beauty – the epitome of good looks and perky popularity – who appeared in many films in the 1950s and 1960s and also had a brief recording career, releasing singles from her films like Tammy and The Snow Queen.
She married singer Bobby Darin in 1960 after a one-month courtship (they divorced in 1967), and by the end of the 1960s, her career had slowed significantly, and she was dropped by Universal Pictures.
She rarely acted following her divorce – her last feature film was The Dunwich Horror in 1970 – although she took sporadic guest-starring roles on episodes of several television series, such as Night Gallery, Fantasy Island and Police Woman, and was name-checked in the 1978 film Grease, with the song Look At Me, I’m Sandra Dee.
Her final performance occurred in the low-budget drama Lost (1983). Throughout the 1980s, she suffered poor health and became a self-described recluse after retiring from acting.
Dee battled anorexia nervosa, depression and alcoholism for many years, hitting a low point after her mother died of lung cancer in December 1987, aged 63.
In a 1991 interview with People magazine, she revealed that she had been sexually abused as a child by her stepfather and that she was pushed into stardom by her mother.
Dee died of kidney disease in California on 20 February 2005, aged 62.
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She married singer Bobby Darin in 1960 after a one-month courtship (they divorced in 1967), and by the end of the 1960s, her career had slowed significantly, and she was dropped by Universal Pictures.
