Annette Andre is an Australian actress best known for her work on British television throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Biography
The daughter of an upholsterer, Annette Andre was born in Sydney, Australia, as Annette Christine Andreallo and educated at Brigidine College, Sydney. She began work as a ballet dancer at the age of 4 at an academy linked to the Australian Ballet. At the age of 15, she decided to quit ballet and pursue acting because she realized that she wasn't 16 yet, the legal age to work in acting. Andre enrolled in a radio training school and her first radio role was in the serial radio drama called Kid Grayson Rides the Range. The first TV role she starred in was a role in the TV movie If It's a Rose, which led her to be in her first film role in This Is My Street, and her other film credits include The Heroes of Telemark, He Who Rides a Tiger, Up Jumped a Swagman with Frank Ifield, and the Charlie Drake comedy Mister Ten Per Cent. She also played Philia, a beautiful virgin concubine from the house of procurer Marcus Lycus in the 1966 film version of the Broadway musicalA Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. She played in the stage musical Vanity Fair in London's West End. Her longest running role was as Marty Hopkirk's widow Jeannie Hopkirk in the ITC series Randall and Hopkirk . She also made guest appearances in other shows such as Whiplash, The Avengers, The Saint, Adam Adamant Lives!, The Troubleshooters, The Baron and The Prisoner and The Persuaders in The episode "Powerswitch". During the 1970s, Andre guest starred in episodes of The Persuaders!, The New Avengers and Return of the Saint. In the 1980s, she appeared in the soap operaCrossroads as well as returning to Australia to play Jennifer Brent in Taurus Rising and Camilla Wells in Prisoner. During 1985 and 1986, she appeared onstage in London's West End in the mystery thriller The Business of Murder at the Mayfair Theatre. Andre is now semi-retired from acting, and devotes much of her time to animal welfare issues. She spearheads the new BFF Support Group and, with her producer husband Arthur Weingarten, works closely with Virginia McKenna of the Zoo Check campaign. She made one of her rare appearances at the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention in Aberdeen, Maryland in September 2007.
Memoir
In 2018, Andre published her memoir Where Have I Been All My Life, with a foreword by Sir Roger Moore and an appreciation by her Randall & Hopkirk co-star, Kenneth Cope.
