‘Scream queen’ Hazel Court, who was known for her fearsome shrieks in horror movies of the 1950s and 60s, died on 15 April, 2008, at the age of 82.

The actress, who starred alongside such greats as Boris Karloff and Vincent Price, made a living out of her ability to die horrible deaths.

Films, like The Premature Burial, The Masque of the Red Death, and The Curse of Frankenstein gave her cult status and brought her fan mail even in her later years.

She also enjoyed a successful TV career, both in her native England and in America, where she was lauded for her beauty and impressive cleavage.

The daughter of a professional cricket player, Hazel Court was born in Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham, on 10 February, 1926. She went on to study drama and got her lucky break at the age of 16 when she met the film director Anthony Asquith. This led to her getting a small part in the 1944 film, Champagne Charlie.

Two years later, she won a British Critics Award for her role as a crippled girl in Carnival.

But by the 1950s her looks propelled her towards a different kind of a role. Her first part in a fantasy film was in Ghost Ship in 1952. She also appeared as an Earth Woman trapped in a pub by an alien in Devil Girl from Mars.

Ever adaptable, she fulfilled an ambition to act in comedies, appearing from 1957 to 1958 in the TV comedy series Dick and the Duchess.

She continued, however, to appear in horror movies. The Curse of Frankenstein, saw her pitched with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in Hammer Horror’s first colour film in 1957.

By now she was travelling back and forth between Hollywood and England, appearing in four TV episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. She had parts in A Woman of Mystery (1958) and The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959) among others.

She finally moved to America permanently in the early 1960s, adding The Premature Burial (1962), The Raven (1963) and The Masque of the Red Death (1964), all inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s works, to her list of horror movie credits.

She was married to Irish actor Dermot Walsh in 1949, divorcing him after 14 years, and then American actor Don Taylor until his death in 1998.

As well as acting, she was also a painter and sculptor. Her daughter, Sally Walsh, said her mother died of a heart attack at her home near Lake Tahoe in California. Paying tribute to her mother, she said:

"She was one of the great beauties of all time. She was a redhead with really green eyes and almost ... the perfect face. She was on the cover of almost every magazine."

Her final film role was in 1981 when she came out of retirement to make a brief appearance in the third Omen film, The Final Conflict. Her other TV credits included Mission Impossible, Dr Kildare, Twelve O’Clock High and The Twilight Zone.

Miss Court was also survived by another daughter, Courtney Taylor, a son, Jonathan Taylor, and two stepdaughters, Anne and Avery Taylor.